REGEN-COV protects against viral escape in preclinical and human studies

Copin, Richard; Baum, Alina; Wloga, Elzbieta; Pascal, Kristen E.; Giordano, Stephanie; Fulton, Benjamin O.; Zhou, Anbo; Negron, Nicole; Lanza, Kathryn; Chan, Newton; Coppola, Angel; Chiu, Joyce; Ni, Min; Wei, Yi; Atwal, Gurinder S.; Hernandez, Annabel Romero; Saotome, Kei; Zhou, Yi; Franklin, Matthew C.; Hooper, Andrea T.; McCarthy, Shane; Hamon, Sara; Hamilton, Jennifer D.; Staples, Hilary M.; Alfson, Kendra; Carrion, Ricardo; Ali, Shazia; Norton, Thomas; Karakaya, Selin Somersan-; Sivapalasingam, Sumathi; Herman, Gary A.; Weinreich, David M.; Lipsich, Leah; Stahl, Neil; Murphy, Andrew J.; Yancopoulos, George D.; Kyratsous, Christos A.

Monoclonal antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 are a clinically validated therapeutic option against COVID-19. As rapidly emerging virus mutants are becoming the next major concern in the fight against the global pandemic, it is imperative that these therapeutic treatments provide coverage against circulating variants and do not contribute to development of treatment emergent resistance. To this end, we investigated the sequence diversity of the spike protein and monitored emergence of minor virus variants in SARS-COV-2 isolates found in COVID-19 patients or identified from preclinical in vitro and in vivo studies. This study demonstrates that a combination of non-competing antibodies, REGEN-COV, not only provides full coverage against current variants of concern/interest but also protects against emergence of new such variants and their potential seeding into the population in a clinical setting.