Journal article

A SARS-CoV-2 surrogate virus neutralization test based on antibody-mediated blockage of ACE2–spike protein–protein interaction

CW Tan, WN Chia, X Qin, P Liu, MIC Chen, C Tiu, Z Hu, VCW Chen, BE Young, WR Sia, YJ Tan, R Foo, Y Yi, DC Lye, DE Anderson, LF Wang

Nature Biotechnology | NATURE PORTFOLIO | Published : 2020

Abstract

A robust serological test to detect neutralizing antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 is urgently needed to determine not only the infection rate, herd immunity and predicted humoral protection, but also vaccine efficacy during clinical trials and after large-scale vaccination. The current gold standard is the conventional virus neutralization test requiring live pathogen and a biosafety level 3 laboratory. Here, we report a SARS-CoV-2 surrogate virus neutralization test that detects total immunodominant neutralizing antibodies targeting the viral spike (S) protein receptor-binding domain in an isotype- and species-independent manner. Our simple and rapid test is based on antibody-mediated blockage of t..

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University of Melbourne Researchers

Grants

Awarded by National Medical Research Council


Funding Acknowledgements

We thank S. Tang, Y. Shen, N. Mao, W. Shao and L. Zhu for technical assistance, advice and logistics support with assay development and testing; Y. Peng, A. Gamage, B. L. Lim and X. M. Ong for assistance with protein purification, sample management and testing; Y. Abdad and L. W. L. Tan for help with human CoV serum collection; V. Vijayan, B. Ng and V. Sivalingam of the Duke-NUS Medical School ABSL3 facility for logistics management and assistance. L.-F.W. and D.E.A. are supported by grants from the Singapore National Research Foundation (NRF2016NRF-NSFC002-013) and the National Medical Research Council (STPRG-FY19-001 and COVID19RF-003).