A team led by researchers atPaul G. Allen School for Global Health discovered spike proteins from the bat virus, known as Khosta-2, that can infect human cells and are resistant to both monoclonal antibodies and serum from SARS-CoV-2 vaccine recipients. Khosta-2 and SARS-CoV-2 are both coronaviruses that belong to the same subclass of coronaviruses known as sarbecoviruses.
Despite the fact that hundreds of sarbecoviruses have recently been identified, mostly in Asian bats, the majority cannot infect human cells. In late 2020, the Khosta-1 and Khosta-2 viruses were found in Russian bats, and at first, it seemed they posed little danger to people. The team found that like SARS-CoV-2, Khosta-2 can use its spike protein to infect cells by attaching to a receptor protein, called angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 , found throughout human cells. They next set out to determine if current vaccines protect against the new virus.