InfectionCMA: A Cell MicroArray Approach for Efficient Biomarker Screening in In Vitro Infection Assays

Abstract

The recently emerged severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has forced the scientific community to acquire knowledge in real-time, when total lockdowns and the interruption of flights severely limited access to reagents as the global pandemic became established. This unique reality made researchers aware of the importance of designing efficient in vitro set-ups to evaluate infectious kinetics. Here, we propose a histology-based method to evaluate infection kinetics grounded in cell microarray (CMA) construction, immunocytochemistry and in situ hybridization techniques. We demonstrate that the chip-like organization of the InfectionCMA has several advantages, allowing side-by-side comparisons between diverse cell lines, infection time points, and biomarker expression and cytolocalization evaluation in the same slide. In addition, this methodology has the potential to be easily adapted for drug screening.

Keywords

• in vitro infectious assays
• cell microarrays
• immunocytochemistry
• SARS-CoV-2
• human receptors for viruses
• cell cycle and apoptosis