Identifying anti-spike antibodies that exhibit strong neutralizing activity against current dominant circulating variants, and antibodies that are escaped by these variants, has important implications in the development of therapeutic and diagnostic solutions and in improving understanding of the humoral response to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection. We characterized seven anti-SARS-CoV-2 receptor binding domain (RBD) antibodies for binding activity, pairing capability, and neutralization activity to SARS-CoV-2 and three variant RBDs via lateral flow immunoassays. The results allowed us to group these antibodies into three distinct epitope bins. Our studies showed that two antibodies had broadly potent neutralizing activity against SARS-CoV-2 and these variant RBDs and that one antibody did not neutralize the South African (SA) and Brazilian P.1 (BR P.1) RBDs. The antibody escaped by the SA and BR P.1 RBDs retained binding activity to SA and BR P.1 RBDs but was unable to induce neutralization. We demonstrated that lateral flow immunoassay could be a rapid and effective tool for antibody characterization, including epitope classification and antibody neutralization kinetics. The potential contributions of the mutations (N501Y, E484K, and K417N/T) contained in these variants’ RBDs to the antibody pairing capability, neutralization activity, and therapeutic antibody targeting strategy are discussed.
【저자키워드】 COVID-19, neutralizing antibody, ACE2, SARS-CoV-2 variant, Spike protein, lateral flow immunoassay, receptor binding domain (RBD), therapeutic antibody cocktail, epitope binning, rapid neutralization test, 【초록키워드】 SARS-CoV-2, coronavirus, Mutation, antibody, neutralization, variant, Infection, diagnostic, anti-SARS-CoV-2, variants, Receptor binding domain, Neutralizing activity, RBD, N501Y, P.1, African, therapeutic, E484K, Lateral flow immunoassays, epitope, Antibody neutralization, anti-spike antibody, RBDs, binding activity, humoral, acute respiratory syndrome, neutralization activity, South, identifying, circulating variants, dominant, implication, effective, Seven, characterized, demonstrated, induce, retained, epitope bins, escaped, not neutralize, 【제목키워드】 SARS-CoV-2, RBD, P.1, Flow, Ability, Lateral,