As the current COVID-19 pandemic continues to harm communities and economies across the world, efficiency in testing for the infection and antibodies is vital.
In a new study, researchers developed a unique and rapid SARS-CoV-2 surrogate virus neutralization test (sVNT).
The sVNT is capable of detecting the functional neutralizing antibodies (NAbs) that can block the binding of the coronavirus spike protein to the ACE2 host receptor, which mimics the virus-host interaction.
The scientists in Singapore and China validated the test across two patient cohorts, with a sample size of 250 from China and 375 from Singapore, achieving 99-100% specificity and 95-100% sensitivity.
The new test may help boost the current COVID-19 work to determine infection rate, herd immunity, predicted humoral protection, and vaccine efficacy during clinical trials.
The research was conducted by a team at Duke-NUS Medical School and elsewhere.
Infection or immunity to the virus is diagnosed by the presence of NAbs in a patient’s blood sample, which would block the RBD–ACE2 interaction.
At this critical moment of the international response to the COVID-19 outbreak, there is an urgent need for a robust serological test that detects NAbs, for accurate assessment of infection prevalence and protective immunity at the individual and population level.
Antibody tests, such as the conventional virus neutralization test (cVNT) and the pseudovirus-based virus neutralization test (pVNT), remain the only platforms for detecting NAbs.
However, both require live viruses and cells, highly skilled operators, and days to obtain results. Other assays, such as the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) detect Babs but are unable to differentiate between BAbs and NAbs.
The sVNT can also measure NAbs from different animals in a species-independent manner.
It can therefore be a powerful tool to study the role of animals in the transmission of COVID-19 from natural reservoirs to intermediate hosts.
The sVNT kit is commercialized by GenScript and offered worldwide under the brand cPass for research use only.
GenScript has also filed for Emergency Use Authorisation with the US Food and Drug Administration and this filing is currently under review.
One author of the study is Wang Linfa, Director of Duke-NUS’ Emerging Infectious Diseases program.
The study is published in Nature Biotechnology.
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