Leaders in Pharmaceutical Business Intelligence (LPBI) Group

Novel SARS-CoV-2 sybodies

Reporter: Irina Robu, PhD

Absolute Antibody Ltd., a leader of the market in recombinant antibody products announced a partnership with University of Zurich to offer synthetic nanobodies against the receptor binding domain (RBD) of SARS-CoV-2. Under the partnership, the original nanobodies and recently engineered formats are now accessible to the global research community for use as serological controls and in COVID-19 therapeutic development. The synthetic nanobodies hold a particular potential for the development of inhalable drugs, which could suggest a convenient treatment option for the COVID-19 pandemic.

The laboratory of Markus Seeger at University of Zurich designs a rapid in vitro selection platform to generate synthetic nanobodies, sybodies, against the receptor binding domain (RBD) of SARS-CoV-2. Within a two-week timeframe, the lab had recognized more than 60 unique anti-RBD sybodies from combinatorial display libraries. The sybodies are “designed to mimic the natural shape diversity of camelid nanobodies, consequently allowing for an optimal surface complementarity to the limited hydrophilic epitopes on membrane proteins. Due to their high thermal stabilities and low production costs, sybodies demonstrate a promise for diagnostic and therapeutic applications.

Sybodies are perfectly suited to trap intrinsically flexible membrane proteins and thereby facilitate structure determination by X-ray crystallography and cryo-EM. Additional research indicate that six of the sybodies bound SARS-CoV-2 spike protein with very high affinity, while five of those also inhibited ACE2, the host cell receptor to which SARS-CoV-2 binds to initiate the COVID-19 infection. Furthermore, two of the sybodies can at the same time bind the RBD, which could permit the construction of a polyvalent antiviral drug. The SARS-CoV-2 sybodies are therefore valuable tools for coronavirus research, diagnostics and therapeutic development.

Moreover, Absolute Antibody has used antibody engineering to fuse the nanobodies to Fc domains in different species, isotypes and subtypes. Absolute Antibody also offers supporting coronavirus research such as the production of gram quantities of human antibodies sequenced from recovering COVID-19 patients.

SOURCE

https://www.biocompare.com/Life-Science-News/562900-SARS-CoV-2-COVID-19-Research-News-Latest-Updates