The emerging threat represented by SARS-CoV-2 variants, demands the development of therapies for better clinical management of COVID-19. MAD0004J08 is a potent Fc-engineered monoclonal antibody (mAb) able to neutralize in vitro all current SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern (VoCs) including the omicron variant even if with significantly reduced potency. Here we evaluated data obtained from the first 30 days of a phase 1 clinical study (EudraCT N.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe emergence of SARS-CoV-2 variants is jeopardizing the effectiveness of current vaccines and limiting the application of monoclonal antibody-based therapy for COVID-19 (refs. ). Here we analysed the memory B cells of five naive and five convalescent people vaccinated with the BNT162b2 mRNA vaccine to investigate the nature of the B cell and antibody response at the single-cell level.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFProc Natl Acad Sci U S A
September 2021
To investigate the evolution of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) in the immune population, we coincupi bated the authentic virus with a highly neutralizing plasma from a COVID-19 convalescent patient. The plasma fully neutralized the virus for seven passages, but, after 45 d, the deletion of F140 in the spike N-terminal domain (NTD) N3 loop led to partial breakthrough. At day 73, an E484K substitution in the receptor-binding domain (RBD) occurred, followed, at day 80, by an insertion in the NTD N5 loop containing a new glycan sequon, which generated a variant completely resistant to plasma neutralization.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUnlabelled: To investigate the evolution of SARS-CoV-2 in the immune population, we co-incubated authentic virus with a highly neutralizing plasma from a COVID-19 convalescent patient. The plasma fully neutralized the virus for 7 passages, but after 45 days, the deletion of F140 in the spike N-terminal domain (NTD) N3 loop led to partial breakthrough. At day 73, an E484K substitution in the receptor-binding domain (RBD) occurred, followed at day 80 by an insertion in the NTD N5 loop containing a new glycan sequon, which generated a variant completely resistant to plasma neutralization.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA newly identified coronavirus, named SARS-CoV-2, emerged in December 2019 in Hubei Province, China, and quickly spread throughout the world; so far, it has caused more than 49.7 million cases of disease and 1,2 million deaths. The diagnosis of SARS-CoV-2 infection is currently based on the detection of viral RNA in nasopharyngeal swabs by means of molecular-based assays, such as real-time RT-PCR.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThere are no robust data on the real onset of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection and spread in the prepandemic period worldwide. We investigated the presence of SARS-CoV-2 receptor-binding domain (RBD)-specific antibodies in blood samples of 959 asymptomatic individuals enrolled in a prospective lung cancer screening trial between September 2019 and March 2020 to track the date of onset, frequency, and temporal and geographic variations across the Italian regions. SARS-CoV-2 RBD-specific antibodies were detected in 111 of 959 (11.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe recent outbreak of a novel Coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) and its rapid spread across the continents has generated an urgent need for assays to detect the neutralising activity of human sera or human monoclonal antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 spike protein and to evaluate the serological immunity in humans. Since the accessibility of live virus microneutralisation (MN) assays with SARS-CoV-2 is limited and requires enhanced bio-containment, the approach based on "pseudotyping" can be considered a useful complement to other serological assays. After fully characterising lentiviral pseudotypes bearing the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, we employed them in pseudotype-based neutralisation assays in order to profile the neutralising activity of human serum samples from an Italian sero-epidemiological study.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFGrowing interest in universal influenza vaccines and novel administration routes has led to the development of alternative serological assays that are able to detect antibodies against conserved epitopes. We present a competitive ELISA method that is able to accurately determine the ratio of serum immunoglobulin G directed against the different domains of the hemagglutinin, the head and the stalk. Human serum samples were treated with two variants of the hemagglutinin protein from the A/California/7/2009 influenza virus.
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