Recently, Academician Cao Xuetao and Associate Professor Lou Hantao from the Institute of Immunology, College of Life Sciences of Nankai University, cooperated with the University of Oxford in publishing a paper entitled "Deep learning-based rapid generation of broadly reactive antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 and its Omicron variant" in Cell Research (IF 46). The experimental team had built Cross B-Cell Receptor network (XBCR-net), an antibody discovery platform based on the Atrous Convolutional Neural Network (ACNN), which can directly predict panel reactive antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 and its new variants based on single-cell BCR sequences. 

Among the antibodies predicted by this technology system, 20  were verified by experiments to bind to SARS-CoV-2 and Omicron variant. Through further screening, the team found that three antibodies had a very strong affinity for SARS-CoV-2 and Omicron variants. This technology system will markedly improve the efficiency of antibody discovery, and is of application value for immunotherapy of infectious diseases, cancer, etc. 

Academician Cao Xuetao and Associate Professor Lou Hantao are the co-corresponding authors of this paper.

Link to the paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41422-022-00727-6#MOESM1 

(Edited and translated by Nankai News Team)