{"doi":"10.1101/2020.09.04.280081","title":"Monoclonal Antibodies Capable of Binding SARS-CoV-2 Spike Protein Receptor Binding Motif Specifically Prevent GM-CSF Induction","abstract":"A severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)-like coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) has recently caused a pandemic COVID-19 disease that infected more than 25.6 million and killed 852,000 people worldwide. Like the SARS-CoV, SARS-CoV-2 also employs a receptor-binding motif (RBM) of its envelope spike protein for binding the host angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) to gain viral entry. Currently, extensive efforts are being made to produce vaccines against a surface fragment of a SARS-CoV-2, such as the spike protein, in order to boost protective antibody responses. It was previously unknown how spike protein-targeting antibodies would affect innate inflammatory responses to SARS-CoV-2 infections. Here we generated a highly purified recombinant protein corresponding to the RBM of SARS-CoV-2, and used it to screen for cross-reactive monoclonal antibodies (mAbs). We found two RBM-binding mAbs that competitively inhibited its interaction with human ACE2, and specifically blocked the RBM-induced GM-CSF secretion in both human monocyte and murine macrophage cultures. Our findings have suggested a possible strategy to prevent SARS-CoV-2-elicited \"cytokine storm\", and provided a potentially useful criteria for future assessment of innate immune-modulating properties of various SARS-CoV-2 vaccines. ONE SENTENCE SUMMARY: RBM-binding Antibodies Inhibit GM-CSF Induction.","journal":"bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)","year":2020,"id":122990,"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":4,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9689,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2020-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":565053,"name":"Shu Zhu","orcid":"0000-0003-2211-9646","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":516696,"name":"Jianhua Li","orcid":"0000-0001-5123-485X","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":247094,"name":"Ping Wang","orcid":"0000-0002-1557-0394","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":72617,"name":"Kevin J. Tracey","orcid":"0000-0003-1884-6314","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":109941,"name":"Haichao Wang","orcid":"0000-0002-0211-9000","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":565052,"name":"Xiaoling Qiang","orcid":"0000-0001-9176-7407","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":45,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:14:55.385653Z","pmid":"32908979","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":[]}