“Inescapable” Covid-19 Antibody Discovery – Neutralizes All Known Covid Strains

> Sotrovimab, the newest antibody therapy, was developed by GlaxoSmithKline and Vir Biotechnology after a large collaborative study by scientists from across the nation discovered a natural antibody (in the blood of a SARS survivor, back in 2003) that has remarkable breadth and efficacy.

> Experiments showed that this antibody, called S309, neutralizes all known SARS-CoV-2 strains – including newly emerged mutants that can now “escape” from previous antibody therapies – as well as the closely related original SARS-CoV virus.

Summary of paper cited in OP [1]:

> The most potently neutralizing antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 — including those in clinical use and dominant in polyclonal sera — target the spike RBD. Mutations in the RBD that reduce binding by antibodies have emerged among SARS-CoV-2 variants, highlighting the need for antibodies and vaccines that are robust to viral escape.

> we identify neutralizing antibodies with exceptional sarbecovirus breadth and a corresponding resistance to SARS-CoV-2 escape. One of these antibodies, S2H97, binds with high affinity across all sarbecovirus clades to a cryptic epitope and prophylactically protects hamsters from viral challenge.

> S2H97 exhibits notably tight binding to all RBDs tested, making it, to our knowledge, the broadest pan-sarbecovirus RBD antibody described to date.

> We cannot predict which mutations will next rise to prominence as SARS-CoV-2 continues to evolve, but it seems likely that they will include additional RBM mutations that affect recognition by infection- and vaccine-elicited antibodies.

This complements a growing body of promising research that will lead to next generation vaccines which should be more resistant to viral evolution. Such research is vital because the current mRNA vaccines induce an immune response that is highly targeted toward the spike protein RBD. Nearly every variant of concern has acquired at least one mutation which confers a degree of immune escape from antibodies targeting the S protein RBD.

[1] SARS-CoV-2 RBD antibodies that maximize breadth and resistance to escape https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03807-6

Could mRNA vaccines be designed to provoke the body into generating antibodies like this on its own?

With the existing mRNA vaccines, they took mRNA that corresponded to a stabilized form of the spike protein. Could you work backwards instead, where you know the kind of antibody you want to generate, so you design an antigen that only that antibody would bind to?