International Union of Crystallography, Acta Crystallographica Section A: Foundations and Advances, a1(76), p. a209-a209, 2020
DOI: 10.1107/s0108767320097937
American Association for the Advancement of Science, Science, 6510(369), p. 1501-1505, 2020
Full text: Unavailable
Stabilizing the prefusion SARS-CoV-2 spike The development of therapeutic antibodies and vaccines against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is focused on the spike (S) protein that decorates the viral surface. A version of the spike ectodomain that includes two proline substitutions (S-2P) and stabilizes the prefusion conformation has been used to determine high-resolution structures. However, even S-2P is unstable and difficult to produce in mammalian cells. Hsieh et al. characterized many individual and combined structure-guided substitutions and identified a variant, named HexaPro, that retains the prefusion conformation but shows higher expression than S-2P and can also withstand heating and freezing. This version of the protein is likely to be useful in the development of vaccines and diagnostics. Science , this issue p. 1501