Professor Byungha Oh from the Department of Biological Sciences and his research team have developed a neutralizing antibody to tackle the problem of COVID-19 variants. Using computational antibody design, the team hopes this antibody can be a solution for not only the variants that currently exist, but also for future variants. 

The SARS-CoV-2 virus is known to induce COVID-19 infection by binding the receptor-binding sites on the spike glycoproteins of mature virions to the hACE2 (human Angiotensin Converting Enzyme2) receptors of human membranes. Neutralizing antibodies are used to mediate biochemical effects of viruses to protect cells; they exploit the aforementioned mechanism, binding in the place of hACE2 to neutralize the receptor-binding sites. 

While antibodies such as Etesevimab and Bamlanivimab proved to be effective against the initial strain of COVID-19, their ability to neutralize the more recent variants of the virus seem to fall short. This is due to the mutations causing the sequences of antibody recognition sites to change, which lowers the affinity between the recognition site and the antibody, effectively disabling the antibodies from binding.

Professor Oh used a computational protein design method to develop a neutralizing antibody that binds strongly to the portion of the viral antigen that remains unmutated, making it relevant not only to every known variant of SARS-CoV-2 including the Omicron variant, but also to SARS-CoV-1 and pangolin coronavirus. This new antibody shows remarkable potential, showing strong neutralizing ability indicators.

This development has great significance in that it produces a cure that could respond immediately and effectively to possible forms of coronavirus that may appear in the future, reducing the possibility of the viruses causing severe respiratory symptoms. The method for computational design that was crucial to the success of this study is also expected to be  widely applicable to the development of other antibodies that are hard to obtain experimentally.