Effective therapies are urgently needed for COVID-19. Here we describe the identification of a new stable human immunoglobulin G1 heavy-chain variable (VH) domain scaffold that was used for the construction of a large library, lCAT6, of engineered human VHs. This library was panned against the receptor-binding domain (RBD) of the SARS-CoV-2 spike (S) glycoprotein. Two VH domains (VH ab6 and VH m397) were selected and fused to Fc for increased half-life in circulation. The VH-Fc ab6 and m397 specifically neutralized SARS-CoV-2 with high potencies (50% neutralization at 0.35 µg/ml and 1.5 µg/ml, respectively) as measured by two independent replication-competent virus neutralization assays. Ab6 and m397 competed with ACE2 for binding to RBD, suggesting a competitive mechanism of virus neutralization. These VH domains may have potential applications for prophylaxis and therapy of COVID-19 alone or in combination, as well as for diagnosis and as tools for research.

Yeast surface-displayed antibody libraries provide an efficient and quantitative screening resource for given antigens, but suffer from typically modest library sizes owing to low yeast transformation efficiency. Yeast mating is an attractive method for overcoming the limit of yeast transformation to construct a large, combinatorial antibody library, but the optimal conditions have not been reported. Here, we report a large synthetic human Fab (antigen binding fragment) yeast surface-displayed library generated by stepwise optimization of yeast mating conditions. We first constructed HC (heavy chain) and LC (light chain) libraries, where all of the six CDRs (complementarity-determining regions) of the variable domains were diversified mimicking the human germline antibody repertoires by degenerate codons, onto single frameworks of VH3-23 and Vkappa1-16 germline sequences, in two haploid cells of opposite mating types. Yeast mating conditions were optimized in the order of cell density, media pH, and cell growth phase, yielding a mating efficiency of ~58% between the two haploid cells carrying HC and LC libraries. We constructed two combinatorial Fab libraries with CDR-H3 of 9 or 11 residues in length with colony diversities of more than 10(9) by one round of yeast mating between the two haploid HC and LC libraries, with modest diversity sizes of ~10(7). The synthetic human Fab yeast-displayed libraries exhibited relative amino acid compositions in each position of the six CDRs that were very similar to those of the designed repertoires, suggesting that they are a promising source for human Fab antibody screening.

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Procollagen type I carboxy-terminal propeptide (PICP), derived from type I procollagen, has been identified as an indicator of type I collagen synthesis in bone matrix formation and skin recovery. PICP is a heterotrimeric glycoprotein consisting of two α1 chains (PICPα1) and one α2 chain (PICPα2). Here, we report the recombinant expression of human PICP using a mammalian expression system. Co-expression of PICPα1 and PICPα2 in HEK293F cells resulted in the production of functional PICP in the correctly assembled heterotrimeric form. Using the recombinant PICP as an antigen, we isolated PICP-specific human monoclonal antibodies from phage-displayed antibody libraries and raised rabbit polyclonal antibodies. Using those antibodies, we then developed a sandwich ELISA for PICP with a limit of detection of 1 ng/mL and a measurable range of 1–640 ng/mL. Both intra- and inter-assay imprecision values were <10%. For measuring PICP levels in human fibroblast cellular extracts and culture supernatants and a human serum, the developed ELISA kit displayed comparable performance to that of a commercialized kit. Our results provide an efficient production strategy for recombinant PICP, facilitating the generation of PICP-specific antibodies and development of PICP sandwich ELISA, with potential use in clinical diagnosis of serum samples and testing of cosmeceutical ingredients in fibroblast cell cultures.

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