Evaluating Antibody Mediated Protection against Alpha, Beta, and Delta SARS-CoV-2 Variants of Concern in K18-hACE2 Transgenic Mice
Ting Y. Wong, Alexander M. Horspool, Brynnan P. Russ, Chengjin Ye, Katherine S. Lee, Michael T. Winters, Justin R. Bevere, Olivia A. Miller, Nathaniel A. Rader, Melissa Cooper, Theodore Kieffer, Julien Sourimant, Alexander L. Greninger, Richard K. Plemper, James Denvir, Holly A. Cyphert, Mariette Barbier, Jordi B. Torrelles, Iván Martínez, Luis Martínez‐Sobrido, F. Heath Damron
Abstract
Emerging SARS-CoV-2 VoC are posing new problems regarding vaccine and monoclonal antibody efficacy. To better understand immune evasion tactics of the VoC, we utilized passive immunization to study the effect of early-pandemic SARS-CoV-2 HCP against, Alpha, Beta, and Delta VoC. We observed that HCP from a human infected with the original SARS-CoV-2 was unable to control lethality of Alpha, Beta, or Delta VoC in the K18-hACE2 transgenic mouse model of SARS-CoV-2 infection. Our findings demonstrate that passive immunization can be used as a model to evaluate immune evasion of emerging VoC strains.