The COVID-19 pandemic is spreading across the world, and has caused an unprecedented public health crisis. So far, there is no vaccine or specific medicine available in the market for the 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV).

WANG Xiangxi, a researcher of the Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), RAO Zihe, an academician of CAS, QIN Chengfeng, a researcher of Microbial Epidemiology Institute of Academy of Military Medical Sciences, WANG Youchun, a researcher of National Institutes for Food and Drug Control and Dr. XIE Liangzhi of Sino Biological set up a coronavirus antibody library by bacteriophage display technology and identified the H014 antibody that has broad-spectrum neutralization capability to β-CoV by the high-throughput sequencing. This antibody can lead up cell surface receptor ACE2 to combine with 2019-nCoV and SARS viruses, which effectively block virus attachment to target cell surface and the interaction of the viral surface S protein and ACE2.

Since mice are sensitive to 2019-nCoV, after using a mouse as a model to test antibody H014, it found out that H014 can significantly reduce virus in the mouse’s lung and greatly decrease pathological damage caused by viral infection, which shows that H014 has clinical application value in preventing and treating the COVID-19.

Researchers analyzed the high resolution 3D structure of the trimer complex of H014 Fab and the S protein of 2019-nCoV, founding out that the compound has three different structures (as the picture below shows), and when the receptor binding domain (RBD) of S protein is in open structure it can combine with H014. H014 can recognize the conservative region of RBD of 2019-nCoV, which provides guidance for the cocktail therapy and new vaccine development.

The achievement of the research has been published on Science on July 23, 2020, with the title of Structural basis for neutralization of SARS-CoV-2 and SARS-CoV by a potent therapeutic antibody. WANG Xiangxi, QIN Chengfeng, RAO Zihe and XIE Liangzhi are the co-authors of the paper. The research was supported and funded by the National Key R&D Program of China, CAS strategic leading technology program, Beijing’s technological problem solving program and Zhejiang basic public welfare research program.

High resolution 3D structure of the trimer complex of H014 Fab and the S protein of 2019-nCoV

(Image by Dr. WANG Xiangxi's group)

Article link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.abc5881

Contact: WANG Xiangxi
Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences
Beijing 100101, China
Email: xiangxi@ibp.ac.cn

(Reported by Dr. WANG Xiangxi's group)