Measuring levels of neutralizing antibodies in SARS CoV-2 infected/recovered and vaccinated individuals using a high-throughput and cost-effective test

As many parts of the northern hemisphere move into the colder months and indoors, SARS CoV-2 has begun a second infection wave that has exceeded the first surge of cases in many global regions. This will likely be complicated by the upcoming flu season and underlines the requirement for effective testing to specifically assess and quantify the protective neutralizing antibody response post SARS CoV-2 infection or vaccination. The quantification of differential immune response levels and longevity between individuals for large populations remains elusive and constrained by the current neutralizing antibody test methods that require live cells and virus with tedious, costly and time consuming procedures. A newly available assay termed cPass SARS-Cov-2 Virus Neutralization Test (also known as Surrogate Virus Neutralization assay) permits the quantitative evaluation of protective neutralizing antibodies in a simple, cost-effective and high-throughput test amenable that mirrors the data from live cell assays. Samples from SARS CoV-2 recovered individuals exhibited differences up to 400-fold in neutralizing antibody titers raising questions around the: 1) strength of immune response between both infected and vaccinated individuals; 2) level of protection against re-infection and 3) duration of protection post infection/vaccination. All of which can be answered using the cPassTM sVNT.

Learning Objectives:

1. Brief overview of SARS CoV-2 infection mechanism

2. Description of cPassTM sVNT, its advantages and comparative qualitative data with live cell neutralization and serology tests

3. Quantitative protocol for cPassTM sVNT and its application to samples from recovered SARS CoV-2 individuals