Immunotherapy of SARS based on combinations of neutralizing human monoclonal antibodies

Evaluation of: Coughlin MM, Babcook J, Prabhakar BS: Human monoclonal antibodies to SARS-coronavirus inhibit infection by different mechanisms. Virology 394(1), 39–46 (2009). This work discusses passive immunotherapy based on neutralizing human monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) with different mechanisms of action. The authors have demonstrated that combining such mAbs, which target distinct epitopes, may greatly increase inhibition of virus infection and suppress the generation of neutralization escape mutants. The inhibition of human mAbs to SARS-coronavirus (CoV) may also act through different mechanisms of action, depending on their target epitopes or regions. Therefore, this approach could provide fast and effective prophylaxis and treatment of SARS-CoV infection during a SARS outbreak. Specifically, Coughlin et al. have indicated that most of the tested anti-S1 mAbs recognized epitopes within the receptor-binding domain and blocked virus attachment to its cellular receptor. These findings could provide a further step in understanding the mechanism of these mAbs in the prevention of SARS-CoV infection, as well as an insight into the design and development of novel therapeutic treatments.