In fact, an NIH-funded study, which originally appeared as a bioRxiv pre-print in November and was recently peer-reviewed and published in Science, has done exactly that. While researchers take a closer look, it’s already possible in the laboratory to predict which mutations will help SARS-CoV-2 evade our therapies and vaccines, and even to prepare for the emergence of new mutations before they occur. These variants, particularly one called B.1.351 that was first identified in South Africa, have raised growing concerns about the extent to which their mutations might help them evade current antibody treatments and highly effective vaccines. You may have heard about the new variants of SARS-CoV-2-the coronavirus that causes COVID-19-that have appeared in other parts of the world and have now been detected in the United States. Credit: Adapted from Starr TN, Science, 2021. It also shows places where mutations are least likely to affect antibody binding (white) and where mutations can’t persist because they’d disrupt RBD’s ability to function (gray). This “escape map” indicates where in the viral RBD new mutations are most likely to make LY-CoV016 less effective (red). Francis Collins Caption: The antibody LY-CoV016 (purple) is bound to RBD.
Mapping Which Coronavirus Variants Will Resist Antibody Treatments
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