Quest for antibodies

Director Biography

Jesper Buijvoets is founder and creative director of Sensu Productions (https://sensu.org/). He has more than 10 years’ experience in creating cinematographic films. His strength lies in bringing together information, feeling and style in one symmetrical visual image. 

Pedagogical value

Our immune system can make quintillions of slightly different antibodies – that’s billions of billions, a nearly infinite resource. When one of these antibodies turns out to be successful at its job, the body starts making more copies. As a result of the lifelong training and adaptation of our immune system, what appears to be a simple trial-and-error system is, in fact, something far more clever. At any given moment, we only make those antibodies that are really needed – meaning that only about a couple of hundred or thousand will ever be dominantly present in our blood. 

Using mass spectrometry-based protein analysis, researchers can now directly monitor the repertoire of antibodies present in blood. Just a few droplets is enough to measure how a person is responding to an infection or vaccination. As a result, we can search for specific antibodies present in those who do not get ill – enabling us to identify the optimal weapon against the disease in question.