Department of Integrative Structural and Computational Biology, The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, California, USA.
The Skaggs Institute for Chemical Biology, The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, California, USA.
Immunol Rev. 2022 Sep;310(1):76-92. doi: 10.1111/imr.13084. Epub 2022 May 22.
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused an unprecedented health crisis and economic burden worldwide. Its etiological agent SARS-CoV-2, a new virus in the coronavirus family, has infected hundreds of millions of people worldwide. SARS-CoV-2 has evolved over the past 2 years to increase its transmissibility as well as to evade the immunity established by previous infection and vaccination. Nevertheless, strong immune responses can be elicited by viral infection and vaccination, which have proved to be protective against the emergence of variants, particularly with respect to hospitalization or severe disease. Here, we review our current understanding of how the virus enters the host cell and how our immune system is able to defend against cell entry and infection. Neutralizing antibodies are a major component of our immune defense and have been extensively studied for SARS-CoV-2 and its variants. Structures of these neutralizing antibodies have provided valuable insights into epitopes that are protective against the original ancestral virus and the variants that have emerged. The molecular characterization of neutralizing epitopes as well as epitope conservation and resistance are important for design of next-generation vaccines and antibody therapeutics.
新型冠状病毒肺炎疫情在全球范围内造成了前所未有的卫生危机和经济负担。其病原体 SARS-CoV-2 是冠状病毒家族中的一种新型病毒，已在全球感染了数亿人。在过去的 2 年中，SARS-CoV-2 通过提高其传播能力以及逃避先前感染和疫苗接种建立的免疫力而进化。然而，病毒感染和疫苗接种可引发强烈的免疫反应，这已被证明可预防变异株的出现，特别是在住院或重症疾病方面。在此，我们回顾了我们目前对病毒进入宿主细胞的方式以及我们的免疫系统如何能够抵御细胞进入和感染的理解。中和抗体是我们免疫防御的主要组成部分，针对 SARS-CoV-2 及其变体进行了广泛研究。这些中和抗体的结构为针对原始祖先病毒和已出现的变体的保护性表位提供了有价值的见解。中和表位的分子特征以及表位的保守性和耐药性对于设计下一代疫苗和抗体疗法非常重要。
