Aptamers. Oligonucleotide or peptide molecules that bind to a specific target molecule. I’m almost certain that this is the one big medical advances that is going to come out of this pandemic.
You already see companies including BioNTech doing something similar by deploying mRNA to treat early MS which is an autoimmune disease. These short segments of mRNA get coded into what are the equivalent of aptamers.
These aptamers can then bind to specific target molecules with a certain degree of specificity depending on the proteins encoded. That could include autoimmune antibodies or other disease causing molecules.
It may very well be the mechanism that causes some long COVID patients to have symptomatic improvement because the spike protein (though a much larger protein) is acting like an aptamer to reset the autoimmune presentation of self-antigens.
Of course this is all theory (and I’m no expert) but I hope this kind of molecular development becomes much more targeted and specific and becomes a potential alternative to steroids and current autoimmune treatments which are like blunt hammers.
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