A protease-activatable luminescent biosensor and reporter cell line for authentic SARS-CoV-2 infection

Gerber, Pehuén Pereyra; Duncan, Lidia M; Greenwood, Edward JD; Marelli, Sara; Naamati, Adi; Teixeira-Silva, Ana; Crozier, Thomas WM; Gabaev, Ildar; Zhan, Jun R; Mulroney, Thomas E; Horner, Emily C; Doffinger, Rainer; Willis, Anne E; Thaventhiran, James ED; Protasio, Anna V; Matheson, Nicholas J

Efforts to define serological correlates of protection against COVID-19 have been hampered by the lack of a simple, scalable, standardised assay for SARS-CoV-2 replication and antibody neutralisation. Plaque assays remain the gold standard, but are impractical for high-throughput screening. In this study, we show that expression of viral proteases may be used to quantitate infected cells. Our assays exploit the cleavage of specific oligopeptide linkers, leading to the activation of cell-based optical biosensors. First, we characterise these biosensors using recombinant SARS-CoV-2 proteases. Next, we confirm their ability to detect viral protease expression during infection with authentic virus. Finally, we generate reporter cells stably expressing an optimised luciferase-based biosensor, enabling viral replication to be measured within 24 h in a 96- or 384-well plate format, including variants of concern. We have therefore developed a luminescent SARS-CoV-2 reporter cell line, and demonstrated its utility for quantitation of infectious virus and neutralising antibodies.