Supriya Ravichandran

TL;DR: A qualitative study by immunizing rabbits with different SARS-CoV-2 spike proteins to profile the quality of induced antibody responses, which demonstrated that the RBD immunogen elicited a higher antibody titer with five-fold higher affinity antibodies to native spike antigens compared with other spike antIGens, and antibody affinity correlated strongly with neutralization titers.

TL;DR: Isotype analysis revealed a predominant IgM response even after the second vaccination, which contributed substantially to virus neutralization in vitro, and may help identify new vaccine targets and aid development and evaluation of effective countermeasures against Ebola.

Abstract: Hospitalized COVID-19 patients often present with a large spectrum of clinical symptoms. There is a critical need to better understand the immune responses to SARS-CoV-2 that lead to either resolution or exacerbation of the clinical disease. Here, we examine longitudinal plasma samples from hospitalized COVID-19 patients with differential clinical outcome. We perform immune-repertoire analysis including cytokine, hACE2-receptor inhibition, neutralization titers, antibody epitope repertoire, antibody kinetics, antibody isotype and antibody affinity maturation against the SARS-CoV-2 prefusion spike protein. Fatal cases demonstrate high plasma levels of IL-6, IL-8, TNFα, and MCP-1, and sustained high percentage of IgA-binding antibodies to prefusion spike compared with non-ICU survivors. Disease resolution in non-ICU and ICU patients associates with antibody binding to the receptor binding motif and fusion peptide, and antibody affinity maturation to SARS-CoV-2 prefusion spike protein. Here, we provide insight into the immune parameters associated with clinical disease severity and disease-resolution outcome in hospitalized patients that could inform development of vaccine/therapeutics against COVID-19.

TL;DR: In this paper, a longitudinal evolution of SARS-CoV-2 antibody repertoire in patients with acute COVID-19 was examined and differential kinetics was observed for immunoglobulin M (IgM)/IgG/IgA epitope diversity, antibody binding, and affinity maturation in "severe" versus "mild" COVID19 patients.

TL;DR: The authors profile the IgG and IgM antibody repertoires that develop over 7 days following acute Zika virus infection and identify new biomarkers for serodiagnosis of Zika virus.