PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Daichi Yamasoba
AU  - Yusuke Kosugi
AU  - Izumi Kimura
AU  - Shigeru Fujita
AU  - Keiya Uriu
AU  - Jumpei Ito
AU  - Kei Sato
AU  - The Genotype to Phenotype Japan (G2P-Japan) Consortium
TI  - Sensitivity of novel SARS-CoV-2 Omicron subvariants, BA.2.11, BA.2.12.1, BA.4 and BA.5 to therapeutic monoclonal antibodies
AID  - 10.1101/2022.05.03.490409
DP  - 2022 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2022.05.03.490409
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2022/05/03/2022.05.03.490409.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2022/05/03/2022.05.03.490409.full
AB  - As of May 2022, Omicron BA.2 variant is the most dominant variant in the world. Thereafter, Omicron subvariants have emerged and some of them began outcompeting BA.2 in multiple countries. For instance, Omicron BA.2.11, BA.2.12.1 and BA.4/5 subvariants are becoming dominant in France, the USA and South Africa, respectively. In this study, we evaluated the sensitivity of these new Omicron subvariants (BA.2.11, BA.2.12.1 and BA.4/5) to eight therapeutic monoclonal antibodies (bamlanivimab, bebtelovimab, casirivimab, cilgavimab, etesevimab, imdevimab, sotrovimab and tixagevimab). Notably, we showed that although cilgavimab is antiviral against BA.2, BA.4/5 exhibits higher resistance to this antibody compared to BA.2. Since mutations are accumulated in the spike proteins of newly emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants, we suggest the importance of rapid evaluation of the efficiency of therapeutic monoclonal antibodies against novel SARS-CoV-2 variants.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.