Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection has a serious impact on people’s health and lives. At present, SARS-CoV-2 is still widely spread, but effective treatments for SARS-CoV-2 are still limited. Therefore, it is of great significance to find broad-spectrum neutralizing antibodies to block SARS-CoV-2 infection. In this study, we successfully expressed and purified three human-mouse chimeric antibodies targeting receptor-binding domain (RBD) of SARS-CoV-2, and then the neutralizing activities of these antibodies against a variety of SARS-CoV-2 pseudoviruses and authentic virus were tested. The results showed that these three antibodies could specifically neutralize SARS-CoV-2 wild-type pseudovirus, and the IC50 values were 0.03 μg/mL, 0.06 μg/mL and 0.03 μg/mL, respectively. Furthermore, these antibodies exhibited broad-spectrum neutralizing activity against Alpha, Delta and Lambda pseudoviruses, and could also inhibit the replication of SARS-CoV-2 Delta authentic virus. Mechanism studies showed that these antibodies could block cell-cell fusion mediated by SARS-CoV-2 S protein, and K417, E484 and N501 on receptor-binding domain (RBD) may be the key sites for binding with these three antibodies.
SHI Huichun1
,
JIAO Fanke2
,
3
,
XU Wei2
,
3
,
CHEN Yongkang2
,
3
,
LU Lu2
,
3
,
ZOU Peng1
. Expression and functional study of chimeric antibodies targeting SARS-CoV-2 receptor binding domain[J]. Journal of Microbes and Infections, 2023
, 18(1)
: 2
-12
.
DOI: 10.3969/j.issn.1673-6184.2023.01.001