Designing neutralization antibodies against Sars-Cov-2

Project SummaryCOVID-19 has become a worldwide pandemic whose rapid spread and mortality rate threatens millions of livesand the global economic system. Developing effective treatment such as neutralization antibodies is an urgentneed. We propose here to develop a new method to design antibodies strongly bind to the SARS-CoV-2receptor binding domain (RBD) that is necessary for viral entrance to human cells. We will develop a novelapproach that combines directed evolution, deep sequencing and interpretable neural network models toefficiently identify strong and specific antibodies. This method will allow analyzing large sequencing data setsof antibody variants against the SARS-CoV-2 RBD in order to derive superior binders that do not exist in theoriginal library. Iteration through directed evolution and computational design will efficiently identifyneutralization antibody candidates that can be used as potent therapeutics to treat COVID-19.