Meet Tyson - A twelve year old (teen) alpaca helping to develop a coronavirus vaccine

My Aunt Dianne shared this exciting and incredible News with me, and I wanted to share it with you. Tyson is in the News this week because he is helping Swedish scientists with the urgent need to develop a vaccine for the coronavirus. That's right; an alpaca is front and center in the race to create a vaccine.

Tyson (pictured), a twelve-year-old alpaca, has been immunized by a team of scientists from the Karolinska Institute with coronavirus proteins. The scientists then harvested the antibodies Tyson created, known as nanobodies, and these nanobodies help humans block the infection from the coronavirus. It turns out that alpacas have smaller nanobodies than the full-size nanobodies produced by humans. The smaller size does work on developing a vaccine easier for scientists. While a vaccine is not fully developed, this work may form the basis for a vaccine against coronavirus.

We knew we picked the right animal to represent us:). AlpacaSoaps is proud of Tyson and his potential to save millions of lives.

Cindy