New York News
A new study led by scientists at La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI) shows how ideal antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 hit their marks.
That’s right: marks. Instead of targeting a single binding site on the SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein, these powerful antibodies bind to two of these sites at once. Through this “bivalent” binding, the antibodies can lock key viral structures into position, preventing the virus from infecting host cells.
The new findings, published in Cell Reports, suggest bivalent antibodies retain efficacy against both early SARS-CoV-2 variants and several later omicron variants. Now scientists are looking at how we might harness their power in new antibody therapeutics and even more effective COVID-19 vaccines.
“The ideal antibodies exist,” says Kathryn Hastie, Ph.D., an LJI Instructor and the Director of the Antibody Discovery Center at LJI. Hastie led the new study alongside LJI Postdoctoral Researcher Heather Callaway, Ph.D., Sharon Schendel, Ph.D., and LJI President and CEO Erica Ollmann Saphire Ph.D. “Now the question is, how do we preferentially boost those?”
The new research was made possible through the Coronavirus Immunotherapy Consortium (CoVIC), a global effort with Saphire as Director and Schendel as Program Manager.
New York News Antibodies vs. omicron
Current COVID-19 vaccines are designed to teach the body to recognize the SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein. Spike is important because it recognizes and latches onto host cells through a region called the receptor binding domain (RBD). Each spike has three copies of the RBD. An antibody that can bind to a target (called an epitope) on the RBD has a chance to jam up this machinery and stop infection.
The problem is that SARS-CoV-2 keeps mutating, and many once-powerful antibodies can’t recognize their usual targets on RBDs. Building vaccines and therapies that will withstand future variation both hinge on figuring out what surviving antibodies have in common.
Callaway and Hastie analyzed nearly 400 antibodies sent by scientists around the world to the CoVIC, which is headquartered at LJI. They