COVID-19 Pandemic

Dr. Natalia Freund

Dr. Freund is at the Department of Clinical Microbiology and Immunology. Her research focuses on human adaptive immune response towards diseases, such as HIV-1, Tuberculosis, SARS-CoV-2 and cancer. Before coming to Tel Aviv University, she completed her postdoctoral training at the Rockefeller University in New York City, where she led groundbreaking research on anti-HIV-1 neutralizing antibodies and proved their efficacy as novel HIV immunotherapeutics.

Neutralizing antibodies

Neutralizing antibodies are a key component of adaptive immunity against many viruses and can be elicited by natural infection or vaccination Recent studies showed that neutralizing antibodies are elicited after SARS

Coronavirus 2 (SARSCoV-2) infection and are directed against the receptor binding domain (RBD) of the SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein. Dr. Freund’s http://www3.tau.ac.il/nfreund/ goal is to characterize the neutralizing antibody responses against SARSCoV-2 by isolating neutralizing antibodies from infected donors and determining the mechanistic basis for their action. Additionally, she is interested in how these antibodies correlate with COVID-19 clinical manifestations and disease severity. Recently, her team has isolated 22 monoclonal antibodies from COVID-19 donors, some of which were found neutralizing against the live SARS-CoV-2.