Preventing Cell Death from Infection: Scripps Research Institute Scientists Demonstrate Powerful Method to Find New Therapies LA JOLLA, CA January 16, 2014 Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have demonstrated the power of a new drug discovery technique, which allows them to find relatively quickly and cheaply antibodies that have a desired effect on cells. The TSRI scientists used the technique to discover two antibodies that protect human cells from a cold virus.
The finding includes the useful insight that the cold virus can be stopped by targeting a key viral enzyme in just the right way. More importantly, the study highlights the broad potential of this discovery method to find new ways to fight infections, cancers and other diseases, and perhaps even aging.
This method allows you to find antibodies that prevent cell death in this case virus-induced cell death, but potentially any kind of cell death, said Richard A. Lerner, the Lita Annenberg Hazen Professor of Immunochemistry and Institute Professor at TSRI. Lerner was the senior author of the study, which is reported online ahead of print on January 16, 2014 by the Cell Press journal Chemistry & Biology.
Bigger Pond, Better Fish
For the past two decades, Lerner and his TSRI laboratory have helped pioneer techniques for discovering antibodies that can be used as therapies or scientific tools. Humira , now among the world's top-selling pharmaceuticals, is one of many products that have been discovered using such techniques.
Recently, the Lerner laboratory developed an advanced technique in which hundreds of millions of distinct antibodies are produced artificially within very large cultures of mammalian cells. Scientists can use such a system to swiftly find any antibodies that cause a desired outcome ( phenotype ) in the cells where they reside.
Scientists for decades have applied similar phenotypic selection methods to libraries of standard small-molecule compounds. But the antibody libraries that can be used with the new method are orders of magnitude larger, making them much more likely to contain members that can achieve a desired result in cells.
Small-molecule libraries generally contain only tens to hundreds of thousands of compounds, whereas with this method we can use libraries with more than a billion distinct antibodies, said Jia Xie, a staff scientist in the Lerner laboratory who was first author of the new study.
The new method gives scientists more power not only to find new antibody-based therapies, but also to discover the biological pathways through which they work pathways that may turn out to be more easily and cheaply targeted by small-molecule drugs.
Earlier this year, Lerner, Xie and their colleagues reported using the new method to find an antibody that can perform the remarkable trick of turning bone marrow cells into young brain cells, via a previously unknown signaling mechanism.
For the new study, the team set out to do a proof-of-principle selection of antibodies that can bring about a different effect: protecting cells against an otherwise certain death. In this case, the agent of death was a rhinovirus, a respiratory virus that is the most common cause of ordinary colds. This rhinovirus reliably kills HeLa cells, a line of human-derived cells that have long been used in studies of viral infection.
Evolving a Discovery, Round by Round
To begin, the team used harmless lentiviruses to distribute the genes for about 100 million distinct antibodies among a similar number of HeLa cells, and later exposed the cells to the rhinovirus. So lethal was this virus to the HeLa cells that nearly every cell soon died, overwhelmed by the infection despite any protective effect from antibodies they harbored.
To detect a protective effect, Xie and his colleagues knew that he would have to make the selection process less drastic. Thus, for the next test, instead of selecting cells that survived for none would have survived they selected cells that showed delayed signs of impending death. The researchers then harvested the antibody genes these cells contained, and distributed them among a fresh set of cells. In this way, they reasoned, the genes for the antibodies that had exerted a protective effect would become more abundant within the cells.
Xie and his colleagues took the cells through three of these selection rounds each requiring about ten days of working and waiting but saw dismayingly few signs of progress. The cells that had been infected with our antibody library still showed marginal to undetectable differences from the control cells, he said.
Then in the fourth round, the protective antibodies became abundant enough to bring about a dramatic change: almost all the antibody-containing cells survived, whereas all the control cells died.
The protection turned out to come from just two antibodies out of the original pool of roughly 100 million. The team determined that both these antibodies protected the cells by attaching to the 3C protease, a rhinovirus enzyme, in ways that hindered its infection-enabling activity.
In principle, if further tests bear out the protective effects of the two antibodies, then optimized versions of them, or small-molecule drugs that hit the same target, could be developed as treatments for rhinovirus infections.
But Xie noted that the study was mainly about demonstrating the usefulness of this broad new method. It's a fast, economical, multi-round selection scheme that enables scientists to identify functional antibodies from an unusually big library, he said. As long as we have a way to detect and select a desired phenotype in the test cells, this method lets us fish out the antibodies that can make the phenotype happen.
The study also shows the power of the new method to illuminate biological pathways that mediate disease in this c
Most recent headlines
11/12/2025
Dalet, a leading provider of cloud-native, end-to-end media workflow solutions, ...
28/11/2025
Nadia Fall attends the 2025 Sundance Film Festival premiere of Brides at the Egyptian Theatre on January 24, 2025, in Park City, Utah. (Photo by Donyale West/...
28/11/2025
It's easy to ignore those little red update available badges. But when it ...
28/11/2025
WASHINGTON Federal Communications Commission has released a tentative agenda for the December Open Commission Meeting scheduled for Thursday, December 18, 2025 ...
28/11/2025
The Professional Fighters League is looking to super-serve fans of mixed martial...
28/11/2025
Fubo has released in beta on select Roku devices a new feature that lets users display up to four simultaneous streams at once....
28/11/2025
The WNBA playoffs and Week 4 of the NFL regular season highlight the list of live sports events airing on television this weekend....
28/11/2025
The 32nd class of honorees to the B+C Hall of Fame took to the stage at New York's Ziegfeld Ballroom on September 26 for a gala induction event. Click below...
28/11/2025
We hold in our hands the very last Next Text for Next TV, the weekly back-and-fo...
28/11/2025
DirecTV said it made a deal with EchoStar to buy EchoStar's video businesses, including satellite-TV provider Dish TV and virtual MVPD Sling TV, for $1 plus...
28/11/2025
The Broadcasting+Cable Hall of Fame, the premier industry event paying tribute to the influencers, innovators and shining lights of broadcast, cable and streami...
28/11/2025
Friday 28 November 2025
Sky Sports x Slawn drop limited-edition football jersey...
28/11/2025
Rohde & Schwarz shows resilience in a challenging environment, revenue exceeds t...
28/11/2025
Unwrapped: The Toy Show Appeal - airing this Sunday on RT One and RT Player- s...
27/11/2025
LONDON Vizrt has added several AI-driven advanced features offering improved speed, intelligence and accuracy in the newest version of its media asset managemen...
27/11/2025
Prime Video has launched AI-powered video season recaps in a beta version for select English-language Prime Original series in the U.S., a move Amazon is callin...
27/11/2025
Back to All News
Netflix's Raat Akeli Hai: The Bansal Murders Marks a Grand...
27/11/2025
27 Nov 2025
GSMA brings M360 Eurasia 2026 to Samarkand in partnership with VEON...
27/11/2025
Tahar Rahim and Izuka Hoyle star in the gripping six-part Sky Original from Acad...
27/11/2025
Thursday 27 November 2025
Sky Arts Reveals the Nation's Greatest Basslines - and Queen Reign Supreme
The UK's most iconic basslines have been revealed...
27/11/2025
Back to All News
Stranger Things 5': Prepare for One Last Adventure With O...
27/11/2025
The media industry has a paradox at its core. It's an industry built on light, color and imagination, yet behind the scenes, it's powered by one of the ...
27/11/2025
Rating reflects rating progress across areas including policies, diversity & inclusion, health & safety and Net Zero leadership
Winchester, UK, 27 November 202...
27/11/2025
What are the industry standards for Retail Media? Kathryn explains that certification is based on the IAB Europe Retail Media Measurement Standards and the IAB ...
27/11/2025
World champion boxer and Irish sporting icon Katie Taylor will be in studio this...
27/11/2025
Roblox, one of the world's most popular online gaming platforms for primary ...
27/11/2025
Black Friday is leveling up. Get ready to score one of the biggest deals of the season - 50% off the first three months of a new GeForce NOW Ultimate membership...
26/11/2025
SVG Sit-Down: Prime Video EP Mike Muriano Previews Massive Black Friday Slate Fe...
26/11/2025
A cinematic snow sculpture at the 1995 Sundance Film Festival. Photo by Randall Michelson...
26/11/2025
Book podcasts are booming. On Spotify, you'll find everything from celebrity book clubs to deep dives with bestselling authors. And in markets where audiobo...
26/11/2025
Mumbai, November 24, 2025: In a first-of-its-kind initiative, JioStar, in collab...
26/11/2025
LONDON Factual content producer ITN Productions has launched a new low-latency IP gallery for news bulletins....
26/11/2025
MIAMI TelevisaUnivision said it struck a new multiyear distribution agreement with YouTube TV that includes distribution of TelevisaUnivision's U.S. network...
26/11/2025
OpenDrives, Inc., a leader in software-defined data storage and data services, today announced the launch of the Atlas Corporate Creative Solution. This new Atl...
26/11/2025
Disguise, the industry-leading company powering the world's biggest live performances, is partnering with pioneering LED wall manufacturer DVS to give atten...
26/11/2025
HighField AI, the pioneer in agentic and multimodal automation for broadcast and media production, today announced the expansion of its global channel partner n...
26/11/2025
As high-stakes Premier League fixtures approach and additional premium content launches, with MONO positioning themselves to dominate Thailand's sports stre...
26/11/2025
Hosting a wide variety of events from high-intensity NHL games to complex live music concerts and major entertainment productions, Montreal's 21,000 capacit...
26/11/2025
Vizrt, the leader in live production technology revolutionizing viewer engagement and experience, releases AI-driven advances focusing on speed, intelligence, a...
26/11/2025
ITN Productions, an award-winning factual content producer, today launched a new low-latency IP gallery for news bulletins. Responsible for delivering a leading...
26/11/2025
Ikegami reports ongoing advances throughout 2025 in developing and delivering coordinated television production solutions that maximize quality, versatility and...
26/11/2025
Following the Nov. 21 blackout of NBCUniversal channels on Fubo, the two sides have traded barbs about their inability to reach a new carriage deal....
26/11/2025
LONDON As TV sports rights become increasingly important for both broadcasters and streamers, Ampere Analysis predicts global investment in the genre will surpa...
26/11/2025
LOS ANGELES Vubiquity said it has achieved the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Media & Entertainment Competency as part of the AWS Partner Network (APN). This designa...
26/11/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission's Enforcement Bureau said it has entered into a consent decree with Comcast calling for the cable company t...
26/11/2025
Berklee Named to the Hollywood Reporters Top Music Schools List The publication highlights the college's screen scoring program, industry partnerships, and ...
26/11/2025
Back to All News
Animated Series Love Through a Prism' Casts New Light on ...
26/11/2025
Back to All News
NALIP Unveils Fifth Cohort of Director Incubator
Social Impact
26 November 2025
United States
Link copied to clipboard
The National Assoc...
26/11/2025
YouView Achieves Greenly Gold Certification for SustainabilityNov 26, 2025
YouView is proud to announce a Gold Certification award from Greenly for our perform...
Preventing Cell Death from Infection: Scripps Research Institute Scientists Demonstrate Powerful Method to Find New Therapies LA JOLLA, CA January 16, 2014 Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have demonstrated the power of a new drug discovery technique, which allows them to find relatively quickly and cheaply antibodies that have a desired effect on cells. The TSRI scientists used the technique to discover two antibodies that protect human cells from a cold virus.
