He’s the Israeli scientist who looked in the Covid crystal ball and predicted the emergence of the latest and potentially devastating coronavirus variant, Omicron.
But Gideon Schreiber is a self-proclaimed optimist — and he believes he can see a way out of the pandemic.
Speaking to the JC, the professor at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot recalled how details of the strain first seen in South Africa emerged last month on science databases.
He said: “We found in Omicron something we hoped we’d never find in a variant.” It was a sobering moment. Few people know more than Prof Schreiber about “protein-to-protein interactions” — a crucial part of the way viruses infect human cells.
In August, the professor of biomolecular sciences and his team were conducting experiments in which the virus evolved in the test tube, to foresee how it might develop in the outside world.
They observed some previously unseen mutations in the virus’s protruding “spike protein” — the part that enables it to bind to human cells.
These went beyond changes seen in the ever-more infectious variants seen since the pandemic began in 2020, most recently Delta.
He was particularly concerned to spot mutations at locations on the spike protein likely to result in tighter binding between virus and cell. Why does that matter? Tighter binding is linked to greater infectivity: the kind of change you really don’t want to see when a pandemic is already raging. If this mutation could develop in a test tube, it might be only a matter of time before it emerged somewhere in the world.
Talking about hundreds of different microscopic locations on the spike protein like familiar friends (or all-too-familiar acquaintances), he explains: “We found a mutation that hadn’t appeared already, at position 498, which in combination with one other gave much tighter binding than anything we had seen before.
“And then we said, OK, we hope we won’t see this because it seemed from past experience tighter binding means it will be more infective.
“So we monitored databases for variants to see if 498 comes up.”
A few weeks ago, the Guardian asked him if Delta would be the last major variant. He recalled replying: “‘That’s a nice thought but I don’t think so, there are more complex variants coming up.’ They cited me a week and a half before Omicron came.”
It was then his vigil for 498 screeched to a halt as news came from South Africa of the new variant.
He said: “We found, wow, not only does it have this mutation at 498, it also has a mutation at 447, 484 and 501, a cluster we predicted to give really strong binding.”
That wasn’t all: for Prof Schreiber, together with Oxford University’s Professor David Stuart and their teams, also found a separate set of mutations “that will hinder good recognition by the immune system”. This means people who are vaccinated or have had Covid are more likely to be infected by Omicron than previous variants.
But Prof Schreiber says: “It doesn’t mean the immune system if you’re vaccinated will not recognise this virus any more, but efficiency will go down.
It doesn’t mean don’t get vaccinated, it means get the booster and be careful, put a mask on.”
Although “Omicron seems to be quite nasty in terms of infectivity”, he cautions: “Whether this will really relate to severe disease nobody knows, we cannot really say. Whether it will go on to be more severe or maybe lighter, we don’t know.”
It’s early days. Warnings of greater infectivity seem to be been borne out by a steep rise in cases. Yet there are grounds for hope. Last week, Israel’s health minister said boosters still appear to reduce severe illness.
But while Covid vaccines have been a godsend, Prof Schreiber suggests the eventual exit from the pandemic may take a different form. He said: “In the end a solution would be if we had a good drug. And we could do drugs that are variant-resistant, which work against the more basic mechanisms that are not affected by the spike mutations.
“If you have Covid and you’re in a risk group then you just take the drug. When you have a bacterial infection, you take antibiotics. We don’t vaccinate for bacterial disease. My belief is not so far from now we’ll get more efficient drugs that will be more available and not expensive and we’ll say let’s go back to normal life.”
In fact, the professor and his team have been working on just such a drug — one they hope will be effective against all variants, and which has already shown good results in tests on cells, hamsters and very recently non-human primates.
Has Israel an advantage as the world’s canary in the Covid coalmine thanks to its early vaccine rollout? “You always can ask if you can see the light at the end of the tunnel or the train that comes against you,’” Prof Schreiber jokes in his all-but-perfect English: “You never know!” Testing and data collection have been crucial. “Everyone who comes to Israel gets a PCR test so we actually know what is going on,” he says.
“It works very well, no queues. I came to the airport three times the last few months and it took two minutes. That’s why we had people come with Omicron and immediately we knew about it.
“Israel is doing the right steps. In the end if it’s very infectious, you can’t totally stop it. You can slow it down so you can understand where Omicron is going. Buy yourself some time, then you see the preparations you should do. In this sense it’s working quite well.”
Prof Schreiber looks to the future with hope, inspired by the achievements of his colleagues battling the pandemic these past two years. “At the end of the day, we never had a medical emergency where the scientific establishment works so fast,” he says.
“It’s really amazing. I’m my whole life an optimist. You live better if you have an optimistic view of life.”
