Principal Investigator:
Luciano Giacò PhD
Ricercatori coinvolti:
Beatrice Tropea MSc, Davide Guido PhD, Fernando Palluzzi PhD, Alessia Preziosi MSc
Obiettivo:
The Covid-19 pandemic has caused around 6 million deaths worldwide.
Therapies with monoclonal antibodies, that target viral RBD domain, have been shown to have clinical benefit in treating SARS-CoV-2 infection. They act as binding competitors for the interaction of viral protein S with ACE2, effectively inhibiting the host-pathogen interaction, thus preventing infection. However, the evolution of the virus and the spreading of Sars-Cov-2 variants, represents a serious threat to the effectiveness of both these therapies and vaccines.
Through Molecular Dynamics simulations is possible to analyze the biological behavior of interaction of the antibodies available in Protein Data Bank (PDB) with the RBD (Receptor Binding Domain) of the viral Spike protein, predicting any loss of contacts in mutated RBD. The interaction and stability provide an estimate of the effectiveness of the available antibodies against the detected variants of SARS-CoV-2.
A further statistical analysis will provide a dose-response model that it will be able to estimate the hazard of new variants of Sars-Cov-2 on the basis of the available antibodies.
The aim of the research is developing a predictive tool to evaluate the effectiveness of monoclonal antibodies against different variants of Sars-Cov-2.