Single cell RNA and immune repertoire profiling of COVID-19 patients reveal novel neutralizing antibody

作者：Fang Li, Meng Luo, Wenyang Zhou, Jinliang Li, Xiyun Jin, Zhaochun Xu, Liran Juan, Zheng Zhang, Yuou Li, Renqiang Liu, Yiqun Li, Chang Xu, Kexin Ma, Huimin Cao, Jingwei Wang, Pingping Wang, Zhigao Bu, Qinghua Jiang · 发表于：Protein & Cell · 年份：2020 · DOI：10.1007/s13238-020-00807-6 · 被引用次数：40 · 研究领域：SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 Research、COVID-19 Clinical Research Studies、Immune responses and vaccinations

There is no doubt that COVID-19 outbreak is currently the biggest public health threat, which has caused catastrophic consequences in many countries and regions. As host immunity is key to fighting against virus infection, it is important to characterize the immunologic changes in the COVID-19 patients, and to explore potential therapeutic candidates. The most efficient ways to end this pandemic are to vaccinate the susceptible population, and to use specific drugs, such as monoclonal antibodies against the viral spike protein (S protein), to treat the affected individuals. Several promising neutralizing antibodies have recently been reported (Cao et al., 2020; Lv et al., 2020). However, no antibody drug against COVID-19 has been approved yet in the world. Against the rapidly evolving SARS-CoV-2 virus, a cocktail of several non-competing antibodies may reach to the maximum treatment effect (Cai et al., 2020). Therefore, developing new potential antibodies remain be highly valuable. Early-stage recovery patients maintain various immune responses and possess abundant protective antibodies in the circulation (Thevarajan et al., 2020). Therefore, we conducted a joint analysis using single cell transcriptome sequencing (scRNA-seq), single cell BCR sequencing (scBCR-seq) and deep BCR repertoire profiling to prioritize the therapeutically relevant neutralizing antibody sequences in patients who have recently cleared the virus. Fresh blood samples were collected from a total of 16 CO...