Yin Yiming, Guo Yan, Jiang Yuxuan, Quinlan Brian, Peng Haiyong, Crynen Gogce, He Wenhui, Zhang Lizhou, Ou Tianling, Bailey Charles C, Farzan Michael
Department of Pediatrics, Boston Children's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115.
The Center for Integrated Solutions to Infectious Diseases (CISID), The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, MA 02142.
bioRxiv. 2023 Oct 23:2023.10.20.563154. doi: 10.1101/2023.10.20.563154.
CRISPR-edited murine B cells engineered to express human antibody variable chains proliferate, class switch, and secrete these antibodies in vaccinated mice. However, current strategies disrupt the heavy-chain locus, resulting in inefficient somatic hypermutation without functional affinity maturation. Here we show that recombined murine heavy- and kappa-variable genes can be directly and simultaneously overwritten, using Cas12a-mediated cuts at their 3'-most J segments and 5' homology arms complementary to distal V segments. Cells edited in this way to express the HIV-1 broadly neutralizing antibodies 10-1074 or VRC26.25-y robustly hypermutated and generated potent neutralizing plasma in vaccinated recipient mice. 10-1074 variants isolated from these mice bound and neutralized HIV-1 envelope glycoprotein more efficiently than wild-type 10-1074 while maintaining or improving its already low polyreactivity and long half-life. We further validated this approach by generating substantially broader and more potent variants of the anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies ZCB11 and S309. Thus, B cells edited at their native loci affinity mature, facilitating development of broad, potent, and bioavailable antibodies and expanding the potential applications of engineered B cells.
经过基因编辑的小鼠B细胞被设计用来表达人类抗体可变链,在接种疫苗的小鼠体内能够增殖、进行类别转换并分泌这些抗体。然而,目前的策略会破坏重链基因座,导致体细胞高频突变效率低下,无法实现功能性亲和力成熟。在此,我们表明,利用Cas12a在重组小鼠重链和κ轻链可变基因最3'端的J片段处进行切割,并使用与远端V片段互补的5'同源臂,可以直接同时重写这些基因。通过这种方式编辑的细胞能够表达HIV-1广泛中和抗体10-1074或VRC26.25-y,在接种疫苗的受体小鼠体内能够强烈地进行高频突变,并产生强效中和性血浆。从这些小鼠中分离出的10-1074变体比野生型10-1074更有效地结合和中和HIV-1包膜糖蛋白,同时保持或改善其已较低的多反应性和较长的半衰期。我们通过产生抗SARS-CoV-2抗体ZCB11和S309的更广泛、更有效的变体进一步验证了这种方法。因此,在其天然基因座进行编辑的B细胞能够进行亲和力成熟,有助于开发广泛、强效且具有生物利用度的抗体,并扩大工程化B细胞的潜在应用。