Volume 30, No 8, Aug 2020

ISSN: 1001-0602 
EISSN: 1748-7838 2018 
impact factor 17.848* 
(Clarivate Analytics, 2019)

Volume 30 Issue 8, August 2020: 702-704   |  Open Access

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Mining of epitopes on spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 from COVID-19 patients

Bao-zhong Zhang^1,2,† , Ye-fan Hu^2,3,† , Lin-lei Chen^4,† , Thomas Yau^3,† , Yi-gang Tong^5,† , Jing-chu Hu1¹ , Jian-piao Cai⁴ , Kwok-Hung Chan⁴ , Ying Dou² , Jian Deng² , Xiao-lei Wang² , Ivan Fan-Ngai Hung³ , Kelvin Kai-Wang To^4,* , Kwok Yung Yuen^4,* , Jian-Dong Huang^1,2,*

¹CAS Key Laboratory of Quantitative Engineering Biology, Shenzhen Institute of Synthetic Biology, Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenzhen, Guangdong 518055, China
²School of Biomedical Sciences, Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine, University of Hong Kong, 3/F, Laboratory Block, 21 Sassoon Road, Hong Kong, China
³Department of Medicine, University of Hong Kong, 4/F Professional Block, Queen Mary Hospital, 102 Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong, China
⁴Department of Microbiology, University of Hong Kong, 19/F T Block, Queen Mary Hospital, 102 Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong, China
⁵Beijing Advanced Innovation Centre for Soft Matter Science and Engineering (BAIC-SM), College of Life Science and Technology, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, Beijing 100029, China
^†These authors contributed equally
Correspondence: Kelvin Kai-Wang To(kelvinto@hku.hk)Kwok Yung Yuen(kyyuen@hku.hk)Jian-Dong Huang(jdhuang@hku.hk)

Dear Editor,

The ongoing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) is a serious threat to global public health, and is imposing severe burdens on human society. Several candidate vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 are now undergoing clinical trials. The Spike (S) protein of SARS-CoV-2 is widely considered as a promising antigen. However, limited information about the protective immune response against SARS-CoV-2 has been reported.1 In vivo or in natura data of the immune response in patients, including major immune responses to S protein, are currently lacking. The development of effective and safe vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 is urgently needed because of some potential adverse events including antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE),2 which might be difficult to avoid in current vaccine designs. Therefore, it is important to mine serological information from COVID-19 patients. In this study, we analysed the correlation between S- or Nucleocapsid (N) protein-specific antibody levels and neutralizing antibody tires. Furthermore, we aimed to identify linear B cell linear immunodominant (ID) sites on the S protein by Pepscan analysis with a series of overlapped peptides against the sera from COVID-19 patients.

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41422-020-0366-x

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