Potent Neutralizing Antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 Identified by High-Throughput Single-Cell Sequencing of Convalescent Patients' B Cells.
Cao, Y., Su, B., Guo, X., Sun, W., Deng, Y., Bao, L., Zhu, Q., Zhang, X., Zheng, Y., Geng, C., Chai, X., He, R., Li, X., Lv, Q., Zhu, H., Deng, W., Xu, Y., Wang, Y., Qiao, L., Tan, Y., Song, L., Wang, G., Du, X., Gao, N., Liu, J., Xiao, J., Su, X.D., Du, Z., Feng, Y., Qin, C., Qin, C., Jin, R., Xie, X.S.(2020) Cell 182: 73-84.e16
- PubMed: 32425270 
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2020.05.025
- Primary Citation of Related Structures:  
7BYR - PubMed Abstract: 
The COVID-19 pandemic urgently needs therapeutic and prophylactic interventions. Here, we report the rapid identification of SARS-CoV-2-neutralizing antibodies by high-throughput single-cell RNA and VDJ sequencing of antigen-enriched B cells from 60 convalescent patients. From 8,558 antigen-binding IgG1 + clonotypes, 14 potent neutralizing antibodies were identified, with the most potent one, BD-368-2, exhibiting an IC 50 of 1.2 and 15 ng/mL against pseudotyped and authentic SARS-CoV-2, respectively. BD-368-2 also displayed strong therapeutic and prophylactic efficacy in SARS-CoV-2-infected hACE2-transgenic mice. Additionally, the 3.8 Å cryo-EM structure of a neutralizing antibody in complex with the spike-ectodomain trimer revealed the antibody's epitope overlaps with the ACE2 binding site. Moreover, we demonstrated that SARS-CoV-2-neutralizing antibodies could be directly selected based on similarities of their predicted CDR3 H structures to those of SARS-CoV-neutralizing antibodies. Altogether, we showed that human neutralizing antibodies could be efficiently discovered by high-throughput single B cell sequencing in response to pandemic infectious diseases.
Organizational Affiliation: 
Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Genomics (ICG) & Biomedical Pioneering Innovation Center (BIOPIC), Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.