Forget Jaws and Sharknado: sharks may prevent us catching coronavirus – and

fight other pandemics in the future

 Sharks have antibody-like proteins that can stop the virus that causes Covid-
19; according to US research
 They aren’t ready to test on humans yet, but could be developed for the fight
against future pandemics

Although some people fear sharks, these often misunderstood creatures may hold a way
to help protect us from the coronavirus, new research suggests.One of the ocean’s top
predators, sharks have antibody-like proteins that can stop the virus that causes Covid-
19, according to a study published in the journal Nature Communications on December
16.

These antibodies, called VNARs (variable new antigen receptors), are part of the shark’s
immune system and may also guard against Covid-19 variants – such as Delta and
Omicron – and related coronaviruses, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which
collaborated on the study, said.

Four nurse sharks, all named after James Bond villains, are being studied in connection
with the coronavirus research, Aaron LeBeau, a University of Wisconsin-Madison
professor and one of the lead researchers, said.

The juvenile sharks’ names are Sir Hugo Drax, Goldfinger, Mr Stamper and Nick Nack.
Although the shark antibodies aren’t ready for testing in humans, “they can help prepare
for future coronavirus outbreaks”, the university said.

“The big issue is there are a number of coronaviruses that are poised for emergence in
humans,” LeBeau said. “What we’re doing is preparing an arsenal of shark VNAR
therapeutics that could be used down the road for future Sars (severe acute respiratory
syndrom) outbreaks.
“It’s a kind of insurance against the future.”

This latest study found that the shark antibodies can “neutralise WIV1-CoV, a coronavirus
that is capable of infecting human cells but currently circulates only in bats, where Sars-
CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, likely originated”, the university said.

The antibodies are extremely tiny, a 10th the size of those found in humans, according to
the university. “These small, antibody-like proteins can get into nooks and crannies that
human antibodies cannot access,” LeBeau said. They can bind to infectious proteins,
which “allows them to recognise structures in proteins that our human antibodies
cannot”, the professor added.

The VNARS were found to also neutralise similar coronaviruses such as Sars-CoV-1,
responsible for the 2003 coronavirus outbreak that emerged in China, according to the
study.

The sharks’ blood was drawn once every seven weeks for studying, LeBeau said, and was
done without them experiencing pain. All of them are male since they “are smaller and
less aggressive than females and we do not want any breeding to occur”, LeBeau said.

The university is only studying nurse sharks, LeBeau said, describing them as “very docile
and easy to work with. We have trained them, so they are basically like dogs.”
LeBeau explained that shark antibodies come in four different types, and nurse sharks
have all four. “Great whites only have two types and hammerheads three,” he added.
“Plus, nurse sharks are safer than those two.”

When could this potential treatment be ready?

It may take two to five years for a developed coronavirus therapy involving shark
antibodies to be ready for testing, according to LeBeau.
For testing in humans, the earliest these antibodies could be ready is in five years, the
professor said.

“Shark antibodies are believed to be non-immunogenic, meaning that the human

immune system will recognise them as human,” LeBeau explained. “Thus, they can be
safely administered to humans without side effects. This is because shark antibodies
share many protein similarities with human antibodies.”

“This new class of drug is cheaper and easier to manufacture than human antibodies,”
the release added.

Amid the pandemic, vaccines are the “bedrock” of protection against the virus, the news
release noted, but those who don’t respond well to the jabs may benefit from other
treatments such as antibodies.

“Future therapies would likely include a cocktail of multiple shark VNARs to maximise
their effectiveness against diverse and mutating viruses,” according to the release.

China’s gaming crackdown: concerns about Steam ban heightened after Christmas
connectivity issues

Concerns that the world’s largest video game platform Steam was blocked in China on
Christmas Day have spread on social media as gamers complained about issues connecting to
the website days after it kicked off its popular year-end sale.

Access to the store appears to be facing intermittent connectivity issues in different parts of
mainland China, with some users saying they had no problems connecting. The government
did not issue any announcements about Steam, nor did Valve Corp, the platform’s US-based
owner.

“I was unable to open the platform through the local network, which returns the error code of
118,” wrote one user on the microblogging platform Weibo on Sunday, referencing the error
for when a web page fails to load. The user added that the platform could still be accessed
using a virtual private network (VPN), a common tool for circumventing internet censorship.

Many Chinese gamers have been expressing concerns that the global Steam platform would
eventually be blocked by the Great Firewall since Valve announced three years ago that it was
working on Steam China. That platform, which launched this year with the help of local
Chinese video gaming partner Perfect World, remains accessible.

Chinese gaming communities have been discussing the issue since Saturday, when problems
started for people trying to access Steampowered.com. “The website is suspected of
encountering intermittent blocking, which means it is blocked part of the time and [based on]
location,” a user posted to HeyBox, a Chinese-language online video gaming community. “It
is similar to how GitHub is blocked in China.”

Microsoft-owned code-sharing site GitHub is another popular platform that has faced
intermittent blocking in China. An outage in 2013 led to an outcry from programmers angry
about being cut off from the important developer community for open-source software, and
access was eventually restored. The incident comes at the end of a year in which Beijing has
instituted one of its harshest crackdowns on the video game industry. Its biggest move came
in August, when it limited gaming time for people under 18 years old to just three hours most
weeks – only between 8pm and 9pm on Friday, Saturday, Sunday and statutory holidays.The
National Press and Publication Administration has not licensed any new games for sale in the
country since July. Domestic developers have also been told to ensure video game content
adheres with China’s “socialist” values.

Since the connectivity issues began, some have speculated on social media about a possible
domain name server (DNS) attack that might explain why some people still had access to
Steam. Results from Ping.pe show packet loss from multiple Chinese cities was reduced on
Monday, although it was still greater than servers connecting from outside China.

The global Steam store has long operated in a legal grey area on the mainland. Games sold in
China are supposed to be officially licensed, which is not the case for all games on the global
platform. Search results from a website affiliated with the Ministry of Industry and
Information Technology (MIIT) show Steampowered.com is blacklisted as an “illegal domain
name”. Calls to MIIT went unanswered on Monday.

While China has already blocked many of Steam’s social features – including discussion
boards, workshops, markets, and broadcasts – Steam has for years been allowed to sell titles
directly to consumers in the country using local payment options like Tencent Holdings’
WeChat Pay and Ant Group’s Alipay. Ant is an affiliate of Alibaba Group Holding, owner of
the South China Post.

Users in China contributed to about a quarter of Steam’s global revenue in 2020, according to
research from Zhiyan Consulting. To maintain access to China, Steam has censored or
blocked games in the past.

In March 2020, Steam blocked Chinese users from purchasing Plague Inc, a real-time strategy
simulation game that allows players to create a pathogen to wipe out humanity. The
game grew in popularity after the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan. The game’s developer
Ndemic Creations said it was informed that the title was deemed illegal by the Cyberspace
Administration of China.

Still, if Steam’s global store is ultimately blocked, Chinese gamers would lose access to
thousands of games not easily accessible through other means. Steam China currently shows
just 103 titles available, a stark contrast with the nearly 110,000 available to Chinese users in
the global store.