Development and multi-center clinical trials of an up-converting phosphor technology-based point-of-care (UPT-POCT) assay for rapid COVID-19 diagnosis and prediction of protective effects

BACKGROUND: Quantitative point-of-care testing assay for detecting antibodies is critical to COVID-19 control. In this study, we established an up-conversion phosphor technology-based point-of-care testing (UPT-POCT), a lateral flow assay, for rapid COVID-19 diagnosis, as well as prediction of seral neutralizing antibody (NAb) activity and protective effects. METHODS: UPT-POCT was developed targeting total antibodies against the receptor-binding domain (RBD) of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. Using ELISA as a contrast method, we evaluated the quantitation accuracy with NAb and serum samples. Cutoff for serum samples was determined through 70 healthy and 140 COVID-19 patients. We evaluated the cross-reactions with antibodies against other viruses. Then, we performed multi-center clinical trials of UPT-POCT, including 782 patients with 387 clinically confirmed COVID-19 cases. Furthermore, RBD-specific antibody levels were detected using UPT-POCT and microneutralization assay for samples from both patients and vaccinees. Specifically, the antibodies of recovered patients with recurrent positive (RP) reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction test results were discussed. RESULTS: The ratios of signal intensities between the test and control bands on the lateral flow strip, namely, T/C ratios, was defined as the results of UPT-POCT. T/C ratios had excellent correlations with concentrations of NAb, as well as OD values of ELISA for serum samples. The sensitivity and specificity of UPT-POCT were 89.15% and 99.75% for 782 cases in seven hospitals in China, respectively. We evaluated RBD-specific antibodies for 528 seral samples from 213 recovered and 99 RP COVID-19 patients, along with 35 seral samples from inactivated SARS-CoV-2 vaccinees, and we discovered that the total RBD-specific antibody level indicated by T/C ratios of UPT-POCT was significantly related to the NAb titers in both COVID-19 patients (r = 0.9404, n = 527; ρ = 0.6836, n = 528) and the vaccinees (r = 0.9063, ρ = 0.7642, n = 35), and it was highly relevant to the protection rate against RP (r = 0.9886, n = 312). CONCLUSION: This study reveals that the UPT-POCT for quantitative detection of total RBD-specific antibody could be employed as a surrogate method for rapid COVID-19 diagnosis and prediction of protective effects. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12866-022-02450-z.