The spike protein looks like little pins stuck in the big cell, it is it that we must stop to stop the infection in an organism.
At the laboratory The Protein Factory 2,0 of the Department of Biotechnology and Life Sciences of the University of Varese, the protein has been reproduced and is made available to those who study it to find a vaccine capable of treating and preventing CoVid-19 infection and disease.
"Protein S was produced in a hamster ovary cell line, in a form identical to the natural one. It is essential for numerous researches but its use is limited by the high commercial cost of millions of dollars per gram - specifies the head of the Pollegioni laboratory - We do not put it up for sale, we make it available to those who intend to carry out research: we are a university, we promote science ”.
The laboratory reproduces mainly human proteins linked to various diseases, from HIV to cancer, from Alzheimer's to Parkinson's. Pollegioni also states: "We make them and throw them out. The university tries to develop diagnostic systems for Covid, The Spike protein can now be used for a thousand things, it is not used directly for a vaccine but is a tool that is used to develop antibodies to the virus. You could buy it but the cost for us and for the research laboratories is unsustainable. Those who create proteins to sell them do not have the researcher's attention. The rector has made the synthetic gene available to us with less than two thousand euros, we with few resources have fully reproduced the spy protein. Now it is available academically without having to buy it but above all it is controlled. We are not a company. Studying it allows us to understand the mutations and the action of the other receptors ”.
Apparently the Varese laboratory is the only one to have reproduced it: "We have not seen communications regarding similar studies. The multinationals will be ahead of us, but they have not made it available to the scientific community ”.
"We do it without wasting resources unnecessarily. It is a difficult protein to produce in recombinant form - adds Elena Rosini, project manager - both because of its large size - it includes over 1260 amino acids - and because it must maintain the characteristics, glycosylation, of the natural protein produced by the virus when it infects our cells ”.
In addition to the whole form of protein S, the portion containing only the receptor binding domain (the Receptor Binding Domain) was also produced.