The past two decades saw several spillovers of animal coronaviruses (aCoVs) to humans. Reporting in Science Immunology, Klompus et al. investigated antibody cross-reactivity between human coronaviruses (hCoVs) and aCoVs by probing the antibody repertoires of 269 individuals who had recovered from COVID-19 against a library of ~13,000 peptides derived from all seven hCoVs and 49 aCoVs. Several broadly reactive monoclonal antibodies showed marked interspecies cross-reactivity. The authors demonstrated that antibody binding data combined with machine learning allows to accurately distinguish between individuals who had been exposed to SARS-CoV-2 and those who had not, even when SARS-CoV-2-specific peptides were excluded from the library. This suggests a potential application of similar antigen libraries for the rapid serological detection of future zoonotic spillovers.
References
Original article
Klompus, S. et al. Cross-reactive antibodies against human coronaviruses and the animal coronavirome suggest diagnostics for future zoonotic spillovers. Sci. Immunol. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciimmunol.abe9950 (2021)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Flemming, A. Detecting future coronavirus pandemics. Nat Rev Immunol 21, 547 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41577-021-00611-1
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41577-021-00611-1