Effective screening of SARS-CoV-2 neutralizing antibodies in patient serum using lentivirus particles pseudotyped with SARS-CoV-2 spike glycoprotein
Ritesh Tandon, Dipanwita Mitra, Poonam Sharma, Martin G. McCandless, Stephen J. Stray, John T. Bates & Gailen D. Marshall
Scientific Reports volume 10, Article number: 19076 (2020)
Abstract
Pseuodotyped particles have significant importance and use in virology as tools for studying the biology of highly pathogenic viruses in a lower biosafety environment. The biological, chemical, and serological studies of the recently emerged SARS-CoV-2 will be greatly aided by the development and optimization of a suitable pseudotyping system. Here, we pseudotyped the SARS-CoV-2 Spike glycoprotein (SPG) on a traditional retroviral (MMLV) as well as a third generation lentiviral (pLV) vector and tested the transduction efficiency in several mammalian cell lines expressing SARS-CoV-2 receptor hACE2. While MMLV pseudotyped the vesicular stomatitis virus G glycoprotein (VSV-G) efficiently, it could not pseudotype the full-length SPG. In contrast, pLV pseudotyped both glycoproteins efficiently; however, much higher titers of pLV-G particles were produced. Among all the tested mammalian cells, 293Ts expressing hACE2 were most efficiently transduced using the pLV-S system.