Establishing the Hungarian Center of Excellence for Molecular Medicine in partnership
with EMBL(739593) Funder: Horizon 2020
NEURAM(712821)
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic caused by severe acute respiratory
syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) led to millions of infections and deaths worldwide.
As this virus evolves rapidly, there is a high need for treatment options that can
win the race against new emerging variants of concern. Here, we describe a novel immunotherapeutic
drug based on the SARS-CoV-2 entry receptor ACE2 and provide experimental evidence
that it cannot only be used for (i) neutralization of SARS-CoV-2 in vitro and in SARS-CoV-2-infected
animal models but also for (ii) clearance of virus-infected cells. For the latter
purpose, we equipped the ACE2 decoy with an epitope tag. Thereby, we converted it
to an adapter molecule, which we successfully applied in the modular platforms UniMAB
and UniCAR for retargeting of either unmodified or universal chimeric antigen receptor-modified
immune effector cells. Our results pave the way for a clinical application of this
novel ACE2 decoy, which will clearly improve COVID-19 treatment.
