Finding New Ways to Fight Coronavirus … From Studying Bats

Posted on March 18th, 2021 by Dr. Francis Collins

David Veesler has spent nearly 20 years imaging in near-atomic detail the parts of various viruses, including coronaviruses, that enable them to infect Homo sapiens. In fact, his lab at the University of Washington, Seattle, was the first to elucidate the 3D architecture of the now infamous spike protein, which coronaviruses use to gain entry into human cells [1]. He uses these fundamental insights to guide the design of vaccines and therapeutics, including promising monoclonal antibodies.

Now, Veesler and his lab are turning to another mammal in their search for new leads for the next generation of antiviral treatments, including ones aimed at the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2. With support from a 2020 NIH Director’s Pioneer Award, Veesler will study members of the order Chiroptera. Or, more colloquially, bats.

Why bats? Veesler says bats are remarkable creatures. They are the only mammals capable of sustained flight. They rarely get cancer and live unusually long lives for such small creatures. More importantly for Veesler’s research, bats host a wide range of viruses—more than any other mammal species. Despite carrying all of these viruses, bats rarely show symptoms of being sick. Yet they are the source for many of the viruses that have spilled over into humans with devastating effect, including rabies, Ebola virus, Nipah and Hendra viruses, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV), and, likely, SARS-CoV-2.

Beyond what is already known about bats’ intriguing qualities, Veesler says humans still have much to discover about these flying mammals, including how their immune systems cope with such an onslaught of viral invaders. For example, it turns out that a bat’s learned, or adaptive, immune system is, for the most part, uncharted territory. As such, it offers an untapped source of potentially promising viral inhibitors just waiting to be unearthed, fully characterized, and then used to guide the development of new kinds of anti-viral therapeutics.

In his studies, Veesler will work with collaborators studying bats around the world to characterize their antibody production. He wants to learn how these antibodies contribute to bats’ impressive ability to tolerate viruses and other pathogens. What is it about the structure of bat antibodies that make them different from human antibodies? And, how can those structural differences serve as blueprints for promising new treatments to combat many potentially deadly viruses?

Interestingly, Veesler’s original grant proposal makes no mention of SARS-CoV-2 or COVID-19. That’s because he submitted it just months before the first reports of the novel coronavirus in Wuhan, China. But Veesler doesn’t consider himself a visionary by expanding his research to bats. He and others had been working on closely related coronaviruses for years, inspired by earlier outbreaks, including SARS in 2002 and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) in 2012 (although MERS apparently came from camels). The researcher didn’t see SARS-CoV-2 coming, but he recognized the potential for some kind of novel coronavirus outbreak in the future.

These days, the Veesler lab has been hard at work to understand SARS-CoV-2 and the human immune response to the virus. His team showed that SARS-CoV-2 uses the human receptor ACE2 to gain entry into our cells [2]. He’s also a member of the international research team that identified a human antibody, called S309, from a person who’d been infected with SARS in 2003. This antibody is showing promise for treating COVID-19 [3], now in a phase 3 clinical trial in the United States.

In another recent study, reported as a pre-print in bioRxiv, Veesler’s team mapped dozens of distinct human antibodies capable of neutralizing SARS-CoV-2 by their ability to hit viral targets outside of the well-known spike protein [4]. Such discoveries may form the basis for new and promising combinations of antibodies to treat COVID-19 that won’t be disabled by concerning new variations in the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. Perhaps, in the future, such therapeutic cocktails may include modified bat-inspired antibodies too.

References:

[1] Cryo-electron microscopy structure of a coronavirus spike glycoprotein trimer. Walls AC, Tortorici MA, Bosch BJ, Frenz B, Rottier PJM, DiMaio F, Rey FA, Veesler D. Nature. 2016 Mar 3;531(7592):114-117.

[2] Structure, function, and antigenicity of the SARS-CoV-2 spike glycoprotein. Walls AC, Park YJ, Tortorici MA, Wall A, McGuire AT, Veesler D. Cell. 2020 Apr 16;181(2):281-292.e6.

[3] Cross-neutralization of SARS-CoV-2 by a human monoclonal SARS-CoV antibody. Pinto D, Park YJ, Beltramello M, Veesler D, Cortil D, et al. Nature.18 May 2020 [Epub ahead of print]

[4] N-terminal domain antigenic mapping reveals a site of vulnerability for SARS-CoV-2. McCallum M, Marco A, Lempp F, Tortorici MA, Pinto D, Walls AC, Whelan SPJ, Virgin HW, Corti D, Pizzuto MS, Veesler D, et al. bioRxiv. 2021 Jan 14.

Links:

COVID-19 Research (NIH)

Veesler Lab (University of Washington, Seattle)

Veesler Project Information (NIH RePORTER)

NIH Director’s Pioneer Award Program (Common Fund)

NIH Support: Common Fund; National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases