Abstract
Background Severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome (SFTS) is an emerging infectious disease circulated in eastern Asian countries including China, Japan and South Korea. Currently, there are no effective prophylactic or therapeutic measurements available in the clinical settings. Antibody-mediated prevention and treatment can be an effective complement to the clinical supporting strategies. Glycoprotein N (Gn) and Glycoprotein C (Gc) are two of the highly antigenic envelope proteins on the SFTS virus (SFTSV) surface and contain neutralizing epitopes that can induce neutralizing antibodies. Methods To obtain the neutralizing antibodies specific to glycoprotein of SFTSV, we used phage display technology to generate a human phage antibody library with ScFv format from the peripheral lymphocytes of 8 patients who had recovered from SFTS. The library was bio-panned against recombinant Gn and Gc proteins for four rounds to find their specific antibody clones. Finally, the selected clones were characterized by binding activity test, virus neutralization and Competitive ELISA.Results An immune human ScFv antibody library against SFTSV with high capacity and diversity was constructed. After 4 rounds of panning, 6 distinct clones were found. Of them, 5 were specific to Gn, whereas only 1 was specific to Gc. The immunofluorescence assay showed only three clones with Gn specificity called MAb 4A6, MAb 2B6 and MAb 1F2, respectively, could bind nature virion. All these clones showed broad neutralization activity against the SFTSV, and had different antigenic epitopes from MAb 4-5, a previous identified antibody clone. Conclusions Three new monoclonal antibodies described in our study could be used as potential agents in immunotherapy against SFTSV infection.