Science: Reveals four worrying mechanisms for evading immune response of new coronavirus variants

May 28, 2021/Bio Valley BIOON/---The coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 that causes COVID-19 is raging around the world.

The study also highlights that several of these mutations are concentrated in a site called the receptor binding site (RBS) of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein.

One implication of this research is that when designing next-generation vaccines and antibody therapies, scientists should consider paying more attention to other vulnerable sites on this virus, which are often not affected by the mutations of interest.

The SARS-CoV-2 variants of interest include the B.

Because these variants have the potential to spread and cause disease—perhaps in some cases, even when vaccinated—scientists believe there is an urgent need to discover how these variants manage to evade most of the immune response in the body, including Antibody response.

In this study, these authors mainly focused on three mutations in the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2: K417N, E484K, and N501Y.

These authors tested representative antibodies of the main classes that target areas in and around RBS.

Using structural imaging techniques, the authors then mapped out the relevant parts of the virus at atomic level resolution to study how these mutations affect the sites where antibodies would otherwise bind and neutralize the virus.

The newly emerged SARS-CoV-2 variant escapes the two main neutralizing antibodies.

These findings indicate that although the antibody response to the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein RBS can neutralize the original SARS-CoV-2 strain very effectively, some variants of this virus can escape---perhaps eventually The vaccine needs to be updated.

At the same time, this study emphasizes the fact that SARS-CoV-2 seems to be naturally prone to three key viral mutations, but these mutations did not change other vulnerable sites on this virus except RBS.

This indicates that future vaccines and antibody-based therapies can provide broader protection against SARS-CoV-2 and its variants by stimulating or using antibodies against parts of the virus other than RBS.

These authors are continuing to study the human antibody response to related variants, and hope to determine a broad protection strategy not only against SARS-CoV-2 and its variants, but also against SARS-CoV-1 and other related and emerging coronaviruses.

Reference materials:

Meng Yuan et al.