As noted in a paper published in the journal Nature Immunology, an international team of scientists has begun a search for humans
However, scientists note that they may be wrong.If genetic resistance to the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus exists, then there may be only a few people with such properties. This was stated by Isabelle Mates, a pediatric immunologist and physician at the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium, which is part of the consortium that initiated the study.
Researchers will first narrow down their search -will turn to those who have been in contact with patients for a long time, but did not pass a positive test and did not develop an immune response against the virus. Of particular interest are people who have lived with an infected partner but have not become infected even without a vaccine.
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A team of collaborators from 10 research centersaround the world, from Brazil to Greece, has already recruited about 500 potential candidates who may meet these criteria. And after the publication of the article, another 600 people contacted them, including from Russia and India, who proposed themselves as possible candidates.
According to Jean-Laurent Casanova, a geneticist andco-author of the study at Rockefeller University in New York, this response surprised them. “I didn’t think that the people who were exposed to the virus would contact us,” he said.
Their goal is to recruit at least 1,000 patients. However, researchers have already begun analyzing data from the volunteers who contacted them.
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