A High Through-put Assay for Circulating Antibodies Directed against the S Protein of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Corona virus 2

Svenja Weiss; Jeromine Klingler; Catarina Hioe; Fatima Amanat; Ian Baine; Erna Milunka Kojic; Jonathan Stoever; Sean Liu; Denise Jurczyszak; Maria Bermudez-Gonzalez; Viviana Simon; Florian Krammer; Susan Zolla-Pazner

The outbreak of infections with SARS-CoV-2 began in late 2019. Specimens from nasopharyngeal swabs are being used in PCR-based assays to test for the presence of the virus. Until the first week in April, 2020 there were no licensed tests for the presence of serum antibodies against proteins of the virus. The first approved tests are now becoming available, but none use a format that can be scaled up for mass screening which is now needed for implementing various public health measures. As per a recent Pubmed search, less than 10 studies using serologic assays have been published and none are high through-put. Added value of this study High through-put antibody tests are needed in order to identify seroconversion, to perform serosurveys, identify potential donors for plasma therapy, assess the prevalence of infection in populations, identify healthcare workers who may be immune to SARS-CoV-2, and to study the nature of the immune response to this pathogen. The method described for detecting antibodies in SARS-CoV-2infected patients can be applied in hospital and reference labs, allowing the assessment of present and past infection in a much higher number of donors per unit of time than assays described heretofore.