Differential Antibody Recognition by Novel SARS-CoV-2 and SARS-CoV Spike Protein Receptor Binding Domains: Mechanistic Insights and Implications for the Design of Diagnostics and Therapeutics

Ilda D’Annessa; Filippo Marchetti; Giorgio Colombo

In SARS-CoV-2 RBD, the knowledge of substructures representing potential conformational epitopes may be helpful in guiding the development of peptide-based immunogens able to elicit antibodies that specifically target the cognate protein to which the predicted epitopes belong (Figure 2 ). Simply speaking, the termini of the linear segments making up the conformational epitopes could be aptly bridged with a number of Gly residues sufficient to approximate the distance in the experimental structure (Table 3 ). Antibodies raised against these molecules, which recapitulate the main determinants of immunoreactivity of the full protein, could have useful applications in a therapeutic setting [19] [20] [21] . Furthermore, information on potentially specific SARS-CoV-2 spike RBD-specific epitopes The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not peer-reviewed) is the . https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.03.13.990267 doi: bioRxiv preprint function both as antigen-mimicking baits to target virus-specific antibodies in patients' fluids, and as immunogens to generate new Abs able to detect relevant antigens [22] [23] .