RESEARCH ARTICLE Escape from neutralizing antibodies by SARS-CoV-2 spike protein variants Yiska Weisblum1†, Fabian Schmidt1†, Fengwen Zhang1, Justin DaSilva1, Daniel Poston1, Julio CC Lorenzi2, Frauke Muecksch1, Magdalena Rutkowska1, Hans-Heinrich Hoffmann3, Eleftherios Michailidis3, Christian Gaebler2, Marianna Agudelo2, Alice Cho2, Zijun Wang2, Anna Gazumyan2, Melissa Cipolla2, Larry Luchsinger4, Christopher D Hillyer4, Marina Caskey2, Davide F Robbiani2,5, Charles M Rice3, Michel C Nussenzweig2,6, Theodora Hatziioannou1*, Paul D Bieniasz1,6* 1Laboratory of Retrovirology, The Rockefeller University, New York, United States; 2Laboratory of Molecular Immunology The Rockefeller University, New York, United States; 3Laboratory of Virology and Infectious Disease The Rockefeller University, New York, United States; 4Lindsley F. Kimball Research Institute, New York Blood Center, New York, United States; 5Institute for Research in Biomedicine, Universita` della Svizzera italiana, Bellinzona, Switzerland; 6Howard Hughes Medical Institute, The Rockefeller University, New York, United States Abstract Neutralizing antibodies elicited by prior infection or vaccination are likely to be key for future protection of individuals and populations against SARS-CoV-2. Moreover, passively administered antibodies are among the most promising therapeutic and prophylactic anti-SARS- CoV-2 agents. However, the degree to which SARS-CoV-2 will adapt to evade neutralizing antibodies is unclear. Using a recombinant chimeric VSV/SARS-CoV-2 reporter virus, we show that functional SARS-CoV-2 S protein variants with mutations in the receptor-binding domain (RBD) and *For correspondence: N-terminal domain that confer resistance to monoclonal antibodies or convalescent plasma can be
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[email protected] (PDB) readily selected. Notably, SARS-CoV-2 S variants that resist commonly elicited neutralizing antibodies are now present at low frequencies in circulating SARS-CoV-2 populations.