penninger , director of the life sciences institute and a professor of medical genetics at ubc, is the lead researcher on an international team that may have found the virus’s achilles heel, shown on a microscopic video of single spike shot in real time.
“the spike is actually covered in sugars,” said penninger, who 22 years ago co-discovered ace2 receptors , a specific protein that allows covid-19, for example, to infect humans. “the virus uses the sugar coating to escape the immune system. that’s what viruses do.
what you see in the video , he said, is the single spike (the large bright object) and lectins (smaller fast-moving objects).
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“ people all get vaccinated and it disappears, unfortunately that’s not happening. the bottom line is that besides vaccines, which are amazing and critical, we also need to develop medicines. “