Characterization of the receptor-binding domain (RBD) of 2019 novel coronavirus: implication for development of RBD protein as a viral attachment inhibitor and vaccine

By Wanbo Tai, Lei He, Xiujuan Zhang, J. Pu, D. Voronin, Shibo Jiang, Yusen Zhou, L. Du. Cellular & Molecular Immunology, 2020

1,532 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The outbreak of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) has posed a serious threat to global public health, calling for the development of safe and effective prophylactics and therapeutics against infection of its causative agent, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), also known as 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV). The CoV spike (S) protein plays the most important roles in viral attachment, fusion and entry, and serves as a target for development of antibodies, entry inhibitors and vaccines. Here, we identified the receptor-binding domain (RBD) in SARS-CoV-2 S protein and found that the RBD protein bound strongly to human and bat angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptors. SARS-CoV-2 RBD exhibited significantly higher binding affinity to ACE2 receptor than SARS-CoV RBD and could block the binding and, hence, attachment of SARS-CoV-2 RBD and SARS-CoV RBD to ACE2-expressing cells, thus inhibiting their infection to host cells. SARS-CoV RBD-specific antibodies could cross-react with SARS-CoV-2 RBD protein, and SARS-CoV RBD-induced antisera could cross-neutralize SARS-CoV-2, suggesting the potential to develop SARS-CoV RBD-based vaccines for prevention of SARS-CoV-2 and SARS-CoV infection.

Subfields: Animal Science and Zoology, Infectious Diseases

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5db839183a4359dcf3fa2f7a71b017c996402cd8

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Animal Science and Zoology

1. F. Krammer
2. F. Amanat

In Infectious Diseases

1. L. Du
2. C. Hillyer
3. F. Krammer
4. F. Amanat
5. Wenshuai Wang
6. Anna Marie Pyle

Citations in the corpus

• COVID-19: angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) expression and tissue susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2 infection (2021, background): “SARS-CoV-2 shares 80% identity with SARS-CoV [1], and both viruses use the angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) as a cellular entry receptor [2, 3].”
• A Potently Neutralizing Antibody Protects Mice against SARS-CoV-2 Infection (2020, background): “Multiple amino acid variations exist between SARS-CoV-2 and SARS-CoV RBDs and to a much larger extent between SARSCoV-2 and MERS-CoV RBDs (13, 50).”
• Biomarkers associated with COVID-19 disease progression (2020, neutral): “protein binds strongly to ACE2 receptors [16].”
• A Thermostable mRNA Vaccine against COVID-19 (2020, positive): “Some recent studies also demonstrated that immunization with the recombinant RBD of SARS-CoV-2 induced high titers of neutralizing antibodies in the absence of antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE) of infection (Quinlan et al., 2020; Tai et al., 2020).”
• Neutralizing Antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 and Other Human Coronaviruses (2020, positive): “CoVRBD-based vaccines that might eventually prevent SARS-CoV-2 and SARSCoV infection [15].”
• Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2): An overview of viral structure and host response (2020, neutral): “Both of these proteins (TMPRSS2 and ACE2) are the main determinants of the entry of this virus.”
• First-in-Human Trial of a SARS CoV 2 Recombinant Spike Protein Nanoparticle Vaccine (2020, background): “NVX-CoV2373 is a recombinant nanoparticle vaccine constructed from the full-length, wild-type SARS-CoV-2 spike glycoprotein, which mediates viral attachment to the human angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (hACE2) receptor of host cells for cellular entry and serves as a key target for development of an”