A bovine antibody possessing an ultralong complementarity-determining region CDRH3 targets a highly conserved epitope in sarbecovirus spike proteins

Broadly neutralizing antibodies have huge potential as novel antiviral therapeutics due to their ability to recognize highly conserved epitopes that are seldom mutated in viral variants. A subset of bovine antibodies possess an ultralong complementarity-determining region (CDR)H3 that is highly adept at recognizing such conserved epitopes, but their reac-tivity against Sarbecovirus Spike proteins has not been explored previously. Here, we use a SARS-naive library to isolate a broadly reactive bovine CDRH3 that binds the receptor-binding domain of SARS-CoV, SARS-CoV-2, and all SARS-CoV-2 variants. We show further that it neutralizes viruses pseudo-typed with SARS-CoV Spike, but this is not by competition with angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) binding. Instead, using differential hydrogen-deuterium ex-change mass spectrometry, we demonstrate that it recognizes the major site of vulnerability of Sarbecoviruses. This glycan-shielded cryptic epitope becomes available only transiently via interdomain movements of the Spike protein such that anti-body binding triggers destruction of the prefusion complex. This proof of principle study demonstrates the power of in vitro expressed bovine antibodies with ultralong CDRH3s for the isolation of novel, broadly reactive tools to combat emerging pathogens and to identify key epitopes for vaccine development.

Automated summary

Broadly reactive bovine antibodies with ultralong CDRH3s can neutralize different variants of Sarbecovirus by recognizing the vulnerable site of the virus. This discovery demonstrates the potential of using bovine antibodies as antiviral therapeutics and for vaccine development.