Viruses (Jul 2021)

Dynamic Assay for Profiling Anti-SARS-CoV-2 Antibodies and Their ACE2/Spike RBD Neutralization Capacity

  • Thomas Phelan,
  • Jean Dunne,
  • Niall Conlon,
  • Clíona Ní Cheallaigh,
  • W. Mark Abbott,
  • Raquel Faba-Rodriguez,
  • Fatima Amanat,
  • Florian Krammer,
  • Mark A. Little,
  • Gerry Hughes,
  • Colm Bergin,
  • Colm Kerr,
  • Sudharshana Sundaresan,
  • Aideen Long,
  • William McCormack,
  • Gareth Brady

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/v13071371
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 13, no. 7
p. 1371

Abstract

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Serological assays have been widely employed during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic to measure antibody responses to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and to track seroconversion in populations. However, currently available assays do not allow determination of neutralization capacity within the assay protocol. Furthermore, commercial serology assays have a high buy-in cost that is inaccessible for many research groups. We have replicated the serological enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay for the detection of SARS-CoV-2 antibody isotypes, developed at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York. Additionally, we have modified the protocol to include a neutralization assay with only a minor modification to this protocol. We used this assay to screen local COVID-19 patient sera (n = 91) and pre-COVID-19 control sera (n = 103), and obtained approximate parity with approved commercial anti-nucleoprotein-based assays with these sera. Furthermore, data from our neutralization assay closely aligns with that generated using a spike-based pseudovirus infection model when a subset of patient sera was analyzed.

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