The First Disease X is Caused by a Highly Transmissible Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus

Based on the announcement of the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2018, the Wuhan pneumonia caused by an unknown etiology should be recognized as the first Disease X. Later, the pathogen was identified to be a novel coronavirus denoted 2019-nCoV, which has 79.5% and 96% whole genome sequence identify to SARS-CoV and bat SARS-related coronavirus (SARSr-CoV-RaTG13), respectively, suggesting its potential bat origin. With high human-to-human transmission rate (R0), 2019-nCoV has quickly spread in China and other countries, resulting in 34,953 confirmed cases and 725 deaths as of 8 February 2020, thus calling for urgent development of therapeutics and prophylactics. Here we suggest renaming 2019-nCoV as “transmissible acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (TARS-CoV)” and briefly review the advancement of research and development of neutralizing antibodies and vaccines targeting the receptor-binding domain (RBD) and viral fusion inhibitors targeting the heptad repeat 1 (HR1) domain in spike protein of 2019-nCoV.