{"doi":"10.1016/j.molimm.2022.10.016","title":"Identification of virus-specific B-cell epitopes by convalescent plasma from COVID-19 patients","abstract":"Identification of immunologic epitopes against SARS-CoV-2 is crucial for the discovery of diagnostic, therapeutic, and preventive targets. In this study, we used a pan-coronavirus peptide microarray to screen for potential B-cell epitopes and validated the results with peptide-based ELISA. Specifically, we identified three linear B-cell epitopes on the SARS-CoV-2 proteome, which were recognized by convalescent plasma from COVID-19 patients. Interestingly, two epitopes (S 809-823 and R1ab 909-923) strongly reacted to convalescent plasma collected at the early phase (< 90 days) of COVID-19 symptom onset, whereas one epitope (M 5-19) reacted to convalescent plasma collected > 90 days after COVID-19 symptom onset. Neutralization assays using antibody depletion with the identified spike (S) peptides revealed that three S epitopes (S 557-571, S 789-803, and S 809-823) elicited neutralizing antibodies in COVID-19 patients. However, the levels of virus-specific antibody targeting S 789-803 only positively correlated with the neutralizing rates at the early phase (<60 days) after disease onset, and the antibody titers diminished quickly with no correlation to the neutralizing activity beyond two months after recovery from COVID-19. Importantly, stimulation of peripheral blood mononuclear cells from COVID-19-recovered patients with these SARS-CoV-2 S peptides resulted in poor virus-specific B cell activation, proliferation, differentiation into memory B cells, and production of immunoglobulin G (IgG) antibodies, despite the B-cells being functionally competent as demonstrated by their response to non-specific stimulation. Taken together, these findings indicate that these newly identified SARS-CoV-2-specific B-cell epitopes can elicit neutralizing antibodies, with titers and/or neutralizing activities declining significantly within 2-3 months in the convalescent plasma of COVID-19 patients.","journal":"Molecular Immunology","year":2022,"id":279437,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":5,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9646,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2022-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":336312,"name":"Juan Zhao","orcid":"0000-0002-1809-3124","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":336311,"name":"Madison Schank","orcid":"0000-0001-9017-3180","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":336317,"name":"Sushant Khanal","orcid":"0000-0001-8028-6034","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":338131,"name":"Xindi Dang","orcid":null,"position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":336315,"name":"Dechao Cao","orcid":"0000-0001-5038-1807","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":336316,"name":"Lam Nhat Nguyen","orcid":"0000-0002-8419-8354","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":105589,"name":"Yi Zhang","orcid":"0000-0002-8228-2560","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":338133,"name":"Xiao Y. Wu","orcid":null,"position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":652466,"name":"James L. Adkins","orcid":null,"position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":953514,"name":"Justin Brueggeman","orcid":null,"position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":482838,"name":"Jinyu Zhang","orcid":"0000-0002-9200-5348","position":11,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":336322,"name":"Shunbin Ning","orcid":"0000-0001-5484-5779","position":12,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":338135,"name":"Mohamed El Gazzar","orcid":null,"position":13,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":336323,"name":"Jonathan P. Moorman","orcid":"0000-0002-6102-6541","position":14,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":336324,"name":"Zhi Q. Yao","orcid":"0000-0002-1848-1071","position":15,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":336313,"name":"Ling Wang","orcid":"0000-0001-7861-2769","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":28,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T00:28:55.546964Z","pmid":"36379129","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}