Neutralizing antibodies targeting SARS-CoV-2 spike protein

SARS-CoV-2 causing the worldwide pandemic has changed people’s life in multiple aspects dramatically since it’s first identified in Wuhan, China at the end of 2019. While the numbers of infected patients and death toll keep vigorous increasing, curbing the progression of the pandemic is an urgent goal. Efforts have been made to search for prophylactic and therapeutic approaches including neutralizing antibodies development. By reviewing dozens of studies on anti-spike antibodies identification, we concluded that (1) promising therapeutic antibodies are being fished out by various approaches, such as screening of single B cells of convalescent patients, recombinant antibody library and B cells of immunized animals; (2) the epitopes are mainly RBD, but also some non-RBD domains, without the requisite of overlapping with ACE2 binding sites; (3) Neutralizing antibodies are convergent to a few germline genes, including IGHV3-30, IGHV3-53, IGHV3-66, with varying levels of somatic mutations. This review summarizes the progress in neutralizing antibodies development and the germline enrichment of effective antibodies, which will shed light on COVID-19 treatment and vaccine design.