Antibodies work inside cells, Mark Ridley reports, not just outside of them:
Dr. James’s team has shown that if an adenovirus enters the cell with antibodies attached, those antibodies will attract TRIM21 molecules, which pull the virus into a disposal system and send danger signals to put the whole cell in a state of antiviral alert. This explains the hitherto baffling finding that just one or two antibody molecules can neutralize a virus 1,000 times their size.