IIT Madras Team Develops Novel Database On COVID Antibodies

Chennai: A team of researchers at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras have developed an online open-source database of coronavirus’ neutralising antibodies.

Named ‘Ab-CoV’, the database contains detailed information on all COVID-related antibodies identified so far, including source of each antibody and viral protein(s) and virus strains they recognise, IIT Madras said in a statement.

The database includes 1,780 coronavirus-related antibodies, including 211 nanobodies, and has around 3,200 data points on half maximal inhibitory concentration, half maximal effective concentration and binding affinity, reported IANS.

The information in the database, published in peer-reviewed journal Bioinformatics, can assist researchers in antibody engineering, analyse immune escape for known and future variants of SARS-CoV-2, computational studies on neutralising antibodies and relating structural features with binding affinity.

“Some of the data in the Ab-CoV database has already been used to understand the relationship between structural features and binding affinities of spike protein-antibody complexes as well as antibody repurposing,” said Michael Gromiha, Faculty, Department of Biotechnology, IIT Madras.

“Ab-CoV also has a wide range of search and display options through which users can directly search and download the processed data, based on the antibody’s name, viral protein epitope, neutralised viral strain, antibody and nanobody. It also has the option to view structures of antibodies or viral proteins in a 3D model,” Gromiha added.

Large amounts of experimental and computational data have been stored online to understand the virus, while emergence of new variants pushed researchers to gather new and comprehensive information.

It will help develop newer drugs and deal better with global disasters that affect human health and economies.

“AbCoV is an exhaustive repository of antibodies, not just specific to SARS CoV-2 but also to other members of the coronavirus family such as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) viruses,” said Vani Janakiraman, another member of Department of Biotechnology faculty, IIT Madras.

“This repository would aid in comparative studies among different neutralising antibodies across coronaviruses and to assess their properties, interaction patterns with epitopes on the native and mutant viral proteins. Such an effort eventually would help to gauge the efficacy of these antibodies towards existing and emerging viral variants,” she added.