A serological assay to detect SARS-CoV-2 seroconversion in humans

By F. Amanat, D. Stadlbauer, Shirin Strohmeier, Thi H. O. Nguyen, Veronika Chromikova, Meagan McMahon, Kaijun Jiang, G. Arunkumar, D. Jurczyszak, J. Polanco and 20 more. medRxiv, 2020

686 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Introduction: SARS-Cov-2 (severe acute respiratory disease coronavirus 2), which causes Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID19) was first detected in China in late 2019 and has since then caused a global pandemic. While molecular assays to directly detect the viral genetic material are available for the diagnosis of acute infection, we currently lack serological assays suitable to specifically detect SARS-CoV-2 antibodies. Methods: Here we describe serological enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISA) that we developed using recombinant antigens derived from the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2. These assays were developed with negative control samples representing pre-COVID 19 background immunity in the general population and samples from COVID19 patients. Results: The assays are sensitive and specific, allowing for screening and identification of COVID19 seroconverters using human plasma/serum as early as 3 days post symptom onset. Importantly, these assays do not require handling of infectious virus, can be adjusted to detect different antibody types and are amendable to scaling. Conclusion: Serological assays are of critical importance to determine seroprevalence in a given population, define previous exposure and identify highly reactive human donors for the generation of convalescent serum as therapeutic. Sensitive and specific identification of coronavirus SARS-Cov-2 antibody titers will also support screening of health care workers to identify those who are already immune and can be deployed to care for infected patients minimizing the risk of viral spread to colleagues and other patients.

Subfields: Infectious Diseases

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/710ef0d64a05f28ab1af36c01ac035a903cd18be

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In Infectious Diseases

Citations in the corpus

The receptor binding domain of the viral spike protein is an immunodominant and highly specific target of antibodies in SARS-CoV-2 patients (2020, background): “Other groups have recently reported finding a strong correlation between spike/RBD antibodies and SARS-CoV-2 neutralization in patients infected with SARS-CoV-2 (4, 17, 18).”
Convergent Antibody Responses to SARS-CoV-2 in Convalescent Individuals (2020, background): “(6) Antigen association: sensors immersed 5 min with RBD at 100 μg/mL.”
Deployment of convalescent plasma for the prevention and treatment of COVID-19. (2020, positive): “One group reported findings demonstrating both “strong reactivity against IgG3, IgM, and IgA” using assays targeting spike antigens and low crossreactivity when testing other human coronaviruses (27).”
Longitudinal evaluation and decline of antibody responses in SARS-CoV-2 infection (2020, background): “Patients diagnosed with COVID-19 were classified as follows: (0) Asymptomatic or no requirement for supplemental oxygen; (1) Requirement for supplemental oxygen (fraction of inspired oxygen (FiO2) < 0.”