Chennai: Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (IIT Madras) have developed a line open source database called ‘Ab-CoV‘ containing detailed information on all COVID-related antibodies identified so far, including the source of each antibody and the viral protein(s) and virus strains they recognize ‘Ab-CoV’ includes 1780 coronavirus-related antibodies, including 211 nanobodies, and contains more than 3200 data points on half maximum inhibitory concentration (IC50), half maximum effective concentration (EC50) and the binding affinity (KD).
The coronavirus neutralizing antibody database covering crucial characteristics such as binding affinity and neutralization profiles (IC50 and EC50) may be a vital resource for researchers to develop therapeutic strategies against novel coronavirus variants. SARS-CoV-2 by facilitating antibody engineering and immune escape analysis. Although vast amounts of experimental and computational data have been stored online to understand the virus, the emergence of new variants prompted researchers to gather comprehensive new information. Such efforts will help develop new medicines and better manage disasters that affect Human health and economies, globally.
The announcement was published in the peer-reviewed journal bioinformatics by authors Dr. Puneet Rawat, Divya Sharma, Dr. R Prabakaran, Fathima Ridha, Mugdha Mohkhedkar, Dr. Vani Janakiraman and Prof. M Michael Gromiha from Department of Biotechnology, Bhupat and Jyoti Mehta School of Biosciences, IIT Madras.
Emphasizing the uniqueness of Ab-CoV, Professor Gromiha, Faculty, Department of Biotechnology, IIT Madras, said: “Some of the data in the Ab-CoV database has already been used to understand the relationship between structural features and the binding affinities of spike protein-antibody complexes, as well as antibody reuse”.
“Ab-CoV also has a wide range of search and display options through which users can directly search and download processed data, based on antibody name, viral protein epitope, neutralized viral strain, antibody and nanobody. You also have the option of viewing antibody structures or viral proteins in a 3D model,” she added.
The information compiled in this database will aid researchers in antibody engineering, analyzing immune escape for known and future variants of SARS-CoV-2, computational studies on neutralizing antibodies, and relating structural features to binding affinity.
Elaborating further, Dr. Janakiraman, Faculty, Department of Biotechnology, IIT Madras, said: “AbCoV is a comprehensive repository of antibodies, not only specific to SARS CoV-2 but also to other members of the coronavirus family, such as Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) virus. This repository would help in comparative studies between different neutralizing antibodies in coronaviruses and to evaluate their properties and interaction patterns with epitopes in native and mutant viral proteins. Such an effort would eventually help measure the efficacy of these antibodies against existing and emerging viral variants.”
