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Importance, Applications and Features of Assays Measuring SARS-CoV-2 Neutralizing Antibodies

More than three years ago, the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) caused the unforeseen COVID-19 pandemic with millions of deaths. In the meantime, SARS-CoV-2 has become endemic and is now part of the repertoire of viruses causing seasonal severe respiratory infections. Due...

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Autores principales: Gattinger, Pia, Ohradanova-Repic, Anna, Valenta, Rudolf
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10048970/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36982424
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijms24065352
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author Gattinger, Pia
Ohradanova-Repic, Anna
Valenta, Rudolf
author_facet Gattinger, Pia
Ohradanova-Repic, Anna
Valenta, Rudolf
author_sort Gattinger, Pia
collection PubMed
description More than three years ago, the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) caused the unforeseen COVID-19 pandemic with millions of deaths. In the meantime, SARS-CoV-2 has become endemic and is now part of the repertoire of viruses causing seasonal severe respiratory infections. Due to several factors, among them the development of SARS-CoV-2 immunity through natural infection, vaccination and the current dominance of seemingly less pathogenic strains belonging to the omicron lineage, the COVID-19 situation has stabilized. However, several challenges remain and the possible new occurrence of highly pathogenic variants remains a threat. Here we review the development, features and importance of assays measuring SARS-CoV-2 neutralizing antibodies (NAbs). In particular we focus on in vitro infection assays and molecular interaction assays studying the binding of the receptor binding domain (RBD) with its cognate cellular receptor ACE2. These assays, but not the measurement of SARS-CoV-2-specific antibodies per se, can inform us of whether antibodies produced by convalescent or vaccinated subjects may protect against the infection and thus have the potential to predict the risk of becoming newly infected. This information is extremely important given the fact that a considerable number of subjects, in particular vulnerable persons, respond poorly to the vaccination with the production of neutralizing antibodies. Furthermore, these assays allow to determine and evaluate the virus-neutralizing capacity of antibodies induced by vaccines and administration of plasma-, immunoglobulin preparations, monoclonal antibodies, ACE2 variants or synthetic compounds to be used for therapy of COVID-19 and assist in the preclinical evaluation of vaccines. Both types of assays can be relatively quickly adapted to newly emerging virus variants to inform us about the magnitude of cross-neutralization, which may even allow us to estimate the risk of becoming infected by newly appearing virus variants. Given the paramount importance of the infection and interaction assays we discuss their specific features, possible advantages and disadvantages, technical aspects and not yet fully resolved issues, such as cut-off levels predicting the degree of in vivo protection.
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spelling pubmed-100489702023-03-29 Importance, Applications and Features of Assays Measuring SARS-CoV-2 Neutralizing Antibodies Gattinger, Pia Ohradanova-Repic, Anna Valenta, Rudolf Int J Mol Sci Review More than three years ago, the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) caused the unforeseen COVID-19 pandemic with millions of deaths. In the meantime, SARS-CoV-2 has become endemic and is now part of the repertoire of viruses causing seasonal severe respiratory infections. Due to several factors, among them the development of SARS-CoV-2 immunity through natural infection, vaccination and the current dominance of seemingly less pathogenic strains belonging to the omicron lineage, the COVID-19 situation has stabilized. However, several challenges remain and the possible new occurrence of highly pathogenic variants remains a threat. Here we review the development, features and importance of assays measuring SARS-CoV-2 neutralizing antibodies (NAbs). In particular we focus on in vitro infection assays and molecular interaction assays studying the binding of the receptor binding domain (RBD) with its cognate cellular receptor ACE2. These assays, but not the measurement of SARS-CoV-2-specific antibodies per se, can inform us of whether antibodies produced by convalescent or vaccinated subjects may protect against the infection and thus have the potential to predict the risk of becoming newly infected. This information is extremely important given the fact that a considerable number of subjects, in particular vulnerable persons, respond poorly to the vaccination with the production of neutralizing antibodies. Furthermore, these assays allow to determine and evaluate the virus-neutralizing capacity of antibodies induced by vaccines and administration of plasma-, immunoglobulin preparations, monoclonal antibodies, ACE2 variants or synthetic compounds to be used for therapy of COVID-19 and assist in the preclinical evaluation of vaccines. Both types of assays can be relatively quickly adapted to newly emerging virus variants to inform us about the magnitude of cross-neutralization, which may even allow us to estimate the risk of becoming infected by newly appearing virus variants. Given the paramount importance of the infection and interaction assays we discuss their specific features, possible advantages and disadvantages, technical aspects and not yet fully resolved issues, such as cut-off levels predicting the degree of in vivo protection. MDPI 2023-03-10 /pmc/articles/PMC10048970/ /pubmed/36982424 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijms24065352 Text en © 2023 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Review
Gattinger, Pia
Ohradanova-Repic, Anna
Valenta, Rudolf
Importance, Applications and Features of Assays Measuring SARS-CoV-2 Neutralizing Antibodies
title Importance, Applications and Features of Assays Measuring SARS-CoV-2 Neutralizing Antibodies
title_full Importance, Applications and Features of Assays Measuring SARS-CoV-2 Neutralizing Antibodies
title_fullStr Importance, Applications and Features of Assays Measuring SARS-CoV-2 Neutralizing Antibodies
title_full_unstemmed Importance, Applications and Features of Assays Measuring SARS-CoV-2 Neutralizing Antibodies
title_short Importance, Applications and Features of Assays Measuring SARS-CoV-2 Neutralizing Antibodies
title_sort importance, applications and features of assays measuring sars-cov-2 neutralizing antibodies
topic Review
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10048970/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36982424
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijms24065352
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