Public antibody clonotypes and deep learning identify SARS-CoV-2 and HIV broadly neutralizing antibodies in immune repertoires

Broadly neutralizing antibodies (bnAbs) are essential for the development of vaccines and therapeutics against rapidly evolving pathogens like HIV and SARS-CoV-2, yet traditional discovery methods remain technically challenging and time consuming. Here, we introduce ClonoDeep, an AI-powered platform that integrates public antibody clonotypes with a sequence-based deep learning model to directly identify bnAbs from a large-scale immune repertoire, independent of antigen-specific immunization. Applied to SARS-CoV-2 repertoires, ClonoDeep identified 18 clonotype-derived antibody candidates; 83% of the candidates were neutralizing antibodies, and 8 of these antibodies demonstrated broad neutralization across variants. Structural analysis revealed that somatic hypermutations at HCDR3 His107/Gly109 are key enhancers of the binding affinity and neutralizing breadth. Extending to HIV, ClonoDeep uncovered three previously unreported bnAbs from non-HIV cohorts, indicating that rare bnAb-like precursors exist in non-HIV cohort repertoires. ClonoDeep establishes a high-throughput computational approach for mining neutralizing antibodies from antibody repertoires shaped by non-pathogen-specific immunity and provides design principles to guide vaccine strategies against genetically diverse pathogens.

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Publication Details

Journal
Cell Reports
Published
2026-06-19
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.celrep.2026.117582
Primary Topic
SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 Research
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
0.00

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article

Public antibody clonotypes and deep learning identify SARS-CoV-2 and HIV broadly neutralizing antibodies in immune repertoires

Yangtao Wu, 余志立, Hai Yu, Qingbing Zheng et al.
Cell Reports
SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 Research
article

Public antibody clonotypes and deep learning identify SARS-CoV-2 and HIV broadly neutralizing antibodies in immune repertoires

Yangtao Wu, 余志立, Hai Yu, Qingbing Zheng, Zhibo Kong, Ningshao Xia, Yuxuan Xiao, Jiahua Gao, Yiwen Zhang, Qingyuan Liu, Shaowei Li, Yuehua Chen, Shutian Lin, Yue Ma, Min Liang, Yanan Jiang, Yanqing Lin, Jun Zhang, Shaogui He, Ying Gu, Fan Liu, Wenling Jiang, Jingyu Dai, Tingting Li, Quan Yuan, Siting Liang, Lizhi Zhou, Lisha Zhang
article en

Abstract

Broadly neutralizing antibodies (bnAbs) are essential for the development of vaccines and therapeutics against rapidly evolving pathogens like HIV and SARS-CoV-2, yet traditional discovery methods remain technically challenging and time consuming. Here, we introduce ClonoDeep, an AI-powered platform that integrates public antibody clonotypes with a sequence-based deep learning model to directly identify bnAbs from a large-scale immune repertoire, independent of antigen-specific immunization. Applied to SARS-CoV-2 repertoires, ClonoDeep identified 18 clonotype-derived antibody candidates; 83% of the candidates were neutralizing antibodies, and 8 of these antibodies demonstrated broad neutralization across variants. Structural analysis revealed that somatic hypermutations at HCDR3 His107/Gly109 are key enhancers of the binding affinity and neutralizing breadth. Extending to HIV, ClonoDeep uncovered three previously unreported bnAbs from non-HIV cohorts, indicating that rare bnAb-like precursors exist in non-HIV cohort repertoires. ClonoDeep establishes a high-throughput computational approach for mining neutralizing antibodies from antibody repertoires shaped by non-pathogen-specific immunity and provides design principles to guide vaccine strategies against genetically diverse pathogens.

Cell ReportsVol. 45(7)
Xiamen University (CN)
National Natural Science Foundation of China, National University's Basic Research Foundation of China
Good health and well-being
Openalex Percentile: Top 8%
SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 Research
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