Application of an integrated computational antibody engineering platform to design SARS-CoV-2 neutralizers

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Abstract

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread, hundreds of new initiatives including studies on existing medicines are running to fight the disease. To deliver a potentially immediate and lasting treatment to current and emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants, new collaborations and ways of sharing are required to create as many paths forward as possible. Here we leverage our expertise in computational antibody engineering to rationally design/engineer three previously reported SARS-CoV neutralizing antibodies and share our proposal towards anti-SARS-CoV-2 biologics therapeutics. SARS-CoV neutralizing antibodies, m396, 80R, and CR-3022 were chosen as templates due to their diversified epitopes and confirmed neutralization potency against SARS-CoV (but not SARS-CoV-2 except for CR3022). Structures of variable fragment (Fv) in complex with receptor binding domain (RBD) from SARS-CoV or SARS-CoV-2 were subjected to our established in silico antibody engineering platform to improve their binding affinity to SARS-CoV-2 and developability profiles. The selected top mutations were ensembled into a focused library for each antibody for further screening. In addition, we convert the selected binders with different epitopes into the trispecific format, aiming to increase potency and to prevent mutational escape. Lastly, to avoid antibody induced virus activation or enhancement, we suggest application of NNAS and DQ mutations to the Fc region to eliminate effector functions and extend half-life.

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  1. SciScore for 10.1101/2021.03.23.436613: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    NIH rigor criteria are not applicable to paper type.

    Table 2: Resources

    Antibodies
    SentencesResources
    Antibody residues that are within 6 Å of the RBD are selected and fed to residue scanning in MOE, Rosetta, TopNetTree, and SAAMBE3D.
    SAAMBE3D
    suggested: None

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).


    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.


    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.


    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.


    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No funding statement was detected.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

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