Identification of a conserved S2 epitope present on spike proteins from all highly pathogenic coronaviruses.

To address the ongoing SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and prepare for future coronavirus outbreaks, understanding the protective potential of epitopes conserved across SARS-CoV-2 variants and coronavirus lineages is essential. We describe a highly conserved, conformational S2 domain epitope present only in the prefusion core of ß-coronaviruses: SARS-CoV-2 S2 apex residues 980-1006 in the flexible hinge. Antibody RAY53 binds the native hinge in MERS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 spikes on the surface of mammalian cells and mediates antibody-dependent cellular phagocytosis and cytotoxicity against SARS-CoV-2 spike in vitro. Hinge epitope mutations that ablate antibody binding compromise pseudovirus infectivity, but changes elsewhere that affect spike opening dynamics, including those found in Omicron BA.1, occlude the epitope and may evade pre-existing serum antibodies targeting the S2 core. This work defines a third class of S2 antibody while providing insights into the potency and limitations of S2 core epitope targeting.

Outsmarting Pathogens with Antibody Engineering.

There is growing interest in identifying antibodies that protect against infectious diseases, especially for high-risk individuals and pathogens for which no vaccine is yet available. However, pathogens that manifest as opportunistic or latent infections express complex arrays of virulence-associated proteins and are adept at avoiding immune responses. Some pathogens have developed strategies to selectively destroy antibodies, whereas others create decoy epitopes that trick the host immune system into generating antibodies that are at best nonprotective and at worst enhance pathogenesis. Antibody engineering strategies can thwart these efforts by accessing conserved neutralizing epitopes, generating Fc domains that resist capture or degradation and even accessing pathogens hidden inside cells. Design of pathogen-resistant antibodies can enhance protection and guide development of vaccine immunogens against these complex pathogens. Here, we discuss general strategies for design of antibodies resistant to specific pathogen defense mechanisms.

Recombinant antibodies recognize conformation-dependent epitopes of the leucine zipper of misfolding-prone myocilin.

Recombinant antibodies with well-characterized epitopes and known conformational specificities are critical reagents to support robust interpretation and reproducibility of immunoassays across biomedical research. For myocilin, a protein prone to misfolding that is associated with glaucoma and an emerging player in other human diseases, currently available antibodies are unable to differentiate among the numerous disease-associated protein states. This fundamentally constrains efforts to understand the connection between myocilin structure, function, and disease. To address this concern, we used protein engineering methods to develop new recombinant antibodies that detect the N-terminal leucine zipper structural domain of myocilin and that are cross-reactive for human and mouse myocilin. After harvesting spleens from immunized mice and in vitro library panning, we identified two antibodies, 2A4 and 1G12. 2A4 specifically recognizes a folded epitope while 1G12 recognizes a range of conformations. We matured antibody 2A4 for improved biophysical properties, resulting in variant 2H2. In a human IgG1 format, 2A4, 1G12, and 2H2 immunoprecipitate full-length folded myocilin present in the spent media of human trabecular meshwork (TM) cells, and 2H2 can visualize myocilin in fixed human TM cells using fluorescence microscopy. These new antibodies should find broad application in glaucoma and other research across multiple species platforms.

Human cytomegalovirus-specific T-cell receptor engineered for high affinity and soluble expression using mammalian cell display.

T-cell receptors (TCR) have considerable potential as therapeutics and antibody-like reagents to monitor disease progression and vaccine efficacy. Whereas antibodies recognize only secreted and surface-bound proteins, TCRs recognize otherwise inaccessible disease-associated intracellular proteins when they are presented as processed peptides bound to major histocompatibility complexes (pMHC). TCRs have been primarily explored for cancer therapy applications but could also target infectious diseases such as cytomegalovirus (CMV). However, TCRs are more difficult to express and engineer than antibodies, and advanced methods are needed to enable their widespread use. Here, we engineered the human CMV-specific TCR RA14 for high-affinity and robust soluble expression. To achieve this, we adapted our previously reported mammalian display system to present TCR extracellular domains and used this to screen CDR3 libraries for clones with increased pMHC affinity. After three rounds of selection, characterized clones retained peptide specificity and activation when expressed on the surface of human Jurkat T cells. We obtained high yields of soluble, monomeric protein by fusing the TCR extracellular domains to antibody hinge and Fc constant regions, adding a stabilizing disulfide bond between the constant domains and disrupting predicted glycosylation sites. One variant exhibited 50 nm affinity for its cognate pMHC, as measured by surface plasmon resonance, and specifically stained cells presenting this pMHC. Our work has identified a human TCR with high affinity for the immunodominant CMV peptide and offers a new strategy to rapidly engineer soluble TCRs for biomedical applications.

De novo design of antibody complementarity determining regions binding a FLAG tetra-peptide.

Computational antibody engineering efforts to date have focused on improving binding affinities or biophysical characteristics. De novo design of antibodies binding specific epitopes could greatly accelerate discovery of therapeutics as compared to conventional immunization or synthetic library selection strategies. Here, we employed de novo complementarity determining region (CDR) design to engineer targeted antibody-antigen interactions using previously described in silico methods. CDRs predicted to bind the minimal FLAG peptide (Asp-Tyr-Lys-Asp) were grafted onto a single-chain variable fragment (scFv) acceptor framework. Fifty scFvs comprised of designed heavy and light or just heavy chain CDRs were synthesized and screened for peptide binding by phage ELISA. Roughly half of the designs resulted in detectable scFv expression. Four antibodies, designed entirely in silico, bound the minimal FLAG sequence with high specificity and sensitivity. When reformatted as soluble antigen-binding fragments (Fab), these clones expressed well, were predominantly monomeric and retained peptide specificity. In both formats, the antibodies bind the peptide only when present at the amino-terminus of a carrier protein and even conservative peptide amino acid substitutions resulted in a complete loss of binding. These results support in silico CDR design of antibody specificity as an emerging antibody engineering strategy.