Barría and her team in Chile had been working for months on antibodies to treat hantavirus that kills about one-in-three people who contract it. The breakthrough came around 2016, when a telltale fluorescent green glow indicating the presence of the virus disappeared under a microscope.
The antibodies developed in the immunovirology lab at the Universidad de Concepción, about 300 miles south of the capital Santiago, had seemingly neutralized the germ.
