Image Courtesy : www.iitm.ac.in

Researchers from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT Madras) have recently developed an online open-source database. It contains all coronaviruses’ neutralizing antibodies recognized so far. The database- Ab-CoV includes a source of each antibody and the viral protein(s) and virus strains they identify.

The database contains 1,780 coronavirus-related antibodies, including 211 nanobodies. This initiative can also help in developing drugs against new variants of SARS-CoV-2. The development by the Indian Institute of Technology Madras has been published in a peer-reviewed journal- Bioinformatics.

IIT Madras, School of biosciences, Bhupat and Jyoti Mehta and IIT Madras, Department of biotechnology, Puneet Rawat, Divya Sharma, R Prabakaran, Fathima Ridha, Mugdha Mohkhedkar, Vani Janakiraman, and M Michael Gromiha are the authors of the paper.

The IITM database assists researchers in-

• Analyzing immune escape for known and prospective variants of SARS-CoV-2


• Antibody engineering


• Relating structural features with binding affinity


• Computational studies on neutralizing antibodies

Stressing the originality of Ab-CoV, IIT Madras, Department of Biotechnology, faculty, M Michael Gromiha said some of the data in the Ab-CoV database has already been utilized in order to understand the link between structural features and binding affinities of spike protein-antibody complexes as well as antibody repurposing.

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