Development of a human ACE2-Fc fusion protein with potent prophylactic and therapeutic efficiency against SARS-CoV-2

Angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) is an important functional receptor for the SARS-CoV-2, which can bind strongly to viral receptor binding domain (RBD) of SARS-CoV-2. Here, we constructed the human ACE2-Fc fusion protein (hACE2-Fc).The efficacy of prophylactic and therapeutic hACE2-Fc treatment in an AdV-hACE2 transduced mouse model was performed. we adopted this animal model for evaluation of hACE-Fc prophylactic and therapeutic efficacy against SARS-CoV-CoV-2 in vivo. Briefly, specific pathogen free 5~6 week-old female BALB/c micewere lightly anesthetized with isoflurane and transduced with Ad5-hACE2 5 days before intranasal challenge with SARS-CoV-2. For i.p hACE2 prophylactic group, mice were injected with hACE2-Fc with the dose of 50 mg/kg one day before infection. Lungs were removed into PBS at days 3 p.i. and used for RNA sequencing, meanwhile vehicles control were performed.