Monoclonal antibodies against human coronavirus NL63 spike

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has illustrated the potential for monoclonal antibody therapeutics as prophylactic and therapeutic agents against pandemic viruses. No such therapeutics currently exist for other human coronaviruses. NL63 is a human alphacoronavirus that typically causes the common cold and uses the same receptor, ACE2, as the highly pathogenic SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 pandemic viruses. In a cohort of healthy adults, we characterised humoral responses against the NL63 spike protein. While NL63 spike and receptor binding domain-specific binding antibodies and neutralisation activity could be detected in plasma of all subjects, memory B cells against NL63 spike were variable and relatively low in frequency compared to that against SARS-CoV-2 spike. From these donors, we isolated a panel of antibodies against NL63 spike and characterised their neutralising potential. We identified potent neutralising antibodies that recognised the receptor binding domain (RBD) and other non-RBD epitopes within spike.