A trans-complementation system for SARS-CoV-2

Zhang, Xianwen; Liu, Yang; Liu, Jianying; Bailey, Adam L.; Plante, Kenneth S.; Plante, Jessica A.; Zou, Jing; Xia, Hongjie; Bopp, Nathen; Aguilar, Patricia; Ren, Ping; Menachery, Vineet D.; Diamond, Michael S.; Weaver, Scott C.; Xie, Xuping; Shi, Pei-Yong

The biosafety level-3 (BSL-3) requirement to culture severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is a bottleneck for research and countermeasure development. Here we report a trans-complementation system that produces single-round infectious SARS-CoV-2 that recapitulates authentic viral replication. We demonstrate that the single-round infectious SARS-CoV-2 can be used at BSL-2 laboratories for high-throughput neutralization and antiviral testing. The trans-complementation system consists of two components: a genomic viral RNA containing a deletion of ORF3 and envelope gene, and a producer cell line expressing the two deleted genes. Trans-complementation of the two components generates virions that can infect naive cells for only one round, but does not produce wild-type SARS-CoV-2. Hamsters and K18-hACE2 transgenic mice inoculated with the complementation-derived virions exhibited no detectable disease, even after intracranial inoculation with the highest possible dose. The results suggest that the trans-complementation platform can be safely used at BSL-2 laboratories for research and countermeasure development.