{"title":"NIEAs elicited by wild-type SARS-CoV-2 primary infection fail to enhance the infectivity of Omicron variants.","authors":"Qi Gui, Haiyan Wang, Congcong Liu, Wenting Li, Bing Zhou, Shilong Tang, Qing Fan, Xiangyang Ge, Bin Ju, Zheng Zhang","doi":"10.1186/s12985-025-02667-0","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>SARS-CoV-2 infection widely induces antibody response targeting diverse viral proteins, including typical representative N-terminal domain (NTD), receptor-binding domain (RBD), and S2 subunit of spike. A lot of NTD-, RBD-, and S2-specific monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) have been isolated from COVID-19 convalescents, some of which displaying potent activities to inhibit viral infection. However, a small portion of NTD-specific mAbs elicited by wild-type (WT) SARS-CoV-2 primary infection could facilitate the virus entry into target cells in vitro, so called NTD-targeting infection-enhancing antibodies (NIEAs). To date, SARS-CoV-2 has evolved to massive variants carrying various NTD mutations, especially recent Omicron BA.2.86 and JN.1. In this study, we investigated whether these WT-NIEAs could still enhance the infectivity of emerging Omicron variants. Nine novel WT-NIEAs with diverse germline gene usage were identified from 3 individuals, effectively enlarging available antibody panel of NIEAs. Bivalent binding of NIEAs to inter-spike contributed to their infection-enhancing activities. WT-NIEAs could enhance the infectivity of SARS-CoV-2 variants emerged before Omicron, but ineffective to Omicron variants including BA.2.86 and JN.1, which was because of their changed antigenicity of NTDs. Overall, these data clearly demonstrated the cross-reactivity of these pre-existed WT-NIEAs to a series of SARS-CoV-2 variants, helping to evaluate the risk of enhanced infection of emerging variants in future.</p>","PeriodicalId":23616,"journal":{"name":"Virology Journal","volume":"22 1","pages":"45"},"PeriodicalIF":4.0000,"publicationDate":"2025-02-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11849304/pdf/","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Virology Journal","FirstCategoryId":"3","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1186/s12985-025-02667-0","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"VIROLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
SARS-CoV-2 infection widely induces antibody response targeting diverse viral proteins, including typical representative N-terminal domain (NTD), receptor-binding domain (RBD), and S2 subunit of spike. A lot of NTD-, RBD-, and S2-specific monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) have been isolated from COVID-19 convalescents, some of which displaying potent activities to inhibit viral infection. However, a small portion of NTD-specific mAbs elicited by wild-type (WT) SARS-CoV-2 primary infection could facilitate the virus entry into target cells in vitro, so called NTD-targeting infection-enhancing antibodies (NIEAs). To date, SARS-CoV-2 has evolved to massive variants carrying various NTD mutations, especially recent Omicron BA.2.86 and JN.1. In this study, we investigated whether these WT-NIEAs could still enhance the infectivity of emerging Omicron variants. Nine novel WT-NIEAs with diverse germline gene usage were identified from 3 individuals, effectively enlarging available antibody panel of NIEAs. Bivalent binding of NIEAs to inter-spike contributed to their infection-enhancing activities. WT-NIEAs could enhance the infectivity of SARS-CoV-2 variants emerged before Omicron, but ineffective to Omicron variants including BA.2.86 and JN.1, which was because of their changed antigenicity of NTDs. Overall, these data clearly demonstrated the cross-reactivity of these pre-existed WT-NIEAs to a series of SARS-CoV-2 variants, helping to evaluate the risk of enhanced infection of emerging variants in future.
期刊介绍:
Virology Journal is an open access, peer reviewed journal that considers articles on all aspects of virology, including research on the viruses of animals, plants and microbes. The journal welcomes basic research as well as pre-clinical and clinical studies of novel diagnostic tools, vaccines and anti-viral therapies.
The Editorial policy of Virology Journal is to publish all research which is assessed by peer reviewers to be a coherent and sound addition to the scientific literature, and puts less emphasis on interest levels or perceived impact.