To express a stabilized ectodomain of Spike protein, a synthetic gene encoding residues 1−1208 of SARS-CoV-2 Spike with the furin cleavage site (residues 682–685) replaced by a “GGSG” sequence, proline substitutions at residues 986 and 987, and a foldon trimerization motif followed by a C-terminal 6xHisTag was created and cloned into the mammalian expression vector pCMV-IRES-puro (Codex BioSolutions, Inc, Gaithersburg, MD).