Natalia Freund receives Tenure
Department of Clinical Microbiology and Immunology
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.
http://www3.tau.ac.il/nfreund/
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 (SARS-CoV-2) infection and are directed against the receptor binding domain (RBD) of the SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein. Dr. Freund’s goal is to characterize the neutralizing antibody responses against SARS-CoV-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.