New research brings into focus the most complete picture yet of how antibodies produced in people who effectively fight off SARS-CoV-2 work to neutralize the part of the virus responsible for causing infection. Researchers say the finding represents good news for designing the next generation of vaccines to protect against variants of the virus or future emerging coronaviruses. “There’s an evolutionary arms race going on between the virus and our immune systems.” Previous research focused on one group of antibodies that target the most obvious part of the coronavirus’s spike protein, called the receptor-binding domain (RBD). Because the RBD is the part of the spike that attaches directly to human cells and enables the virus to infect them, researchers rightly assumed it to be a primary target of the immune system.