" If the research pans out, it could be possible to stockpile these antibodies, the immune system's search-and-destroy force, as an additional way to treat or even prevent H5N1 in case the worrisome flu strain ever mutates to spark a worldwide epidemic. "

" "Obviously we're interested and excited about this potential," said Dr. Anthony Fauci, infectious disease chief at the National Institutes of Health. "

" The research started when four Vietnamese adults who survived bouts of H5N1 in 2004 agreed to donate blood to the Hospital for Tropical Diseases in Ho Chi Minh City. "

" At Switzerland's Institute for Research in Biomedicine, Dr. Antonio Lanzavecchia created a way to cull antibody-producing cells from the blood and keep them churning out the molecules in laboratory dishes. "

" In the U.S., the NIH's Dr. Kanta Subbarao tested thousands of those antibodies to tease out the handful able to kill H5N1. They were purified to better target the virus. "

" Then came the real tests: Subbarao's lab infected mice with H5N1. Some were given the antibodies before they were exposed, others after they already were infected; still others were given antibodies that target different diseases, not influenza. "

" Mice given the non-H5N1 antibodies died. The H5N1-targeting antibodies protected mice, both when they were administered as a vaccine-like preventive or after infection. Importantly, they worked against both the same 2004 strain that the people had survived and against a different H5N1 strain that circulated in 2005. "

" This approach is called "passive immunotherapy," and more crude forms of the approach have long been used to protect against certain viruses. Before
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