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研究人员开发一个快速测试来衡量immunity to COVID-19

New blood assay provides critical information for revaccination strategies in vulnerable individuals

Date:
June 14, 2022
Source:
The Mount Sinai Hospital / Mount Sinai School of Medicine
Summary:
Researchers have developed a rapid blood assay that measures the magnitude and duration of someone's immunity to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. This test will allow large-scale monitoring of the population's immunity and the effectiveness of current vaccines to help design revaccination strategies for vulnerable immunosuppressed individuals, according to a new study.
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FULL STORY

Mount Sinai researchers have developed a rapid blood assay that measures the magnitude and duration of someone's immunity to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. This test will allow large-scale monitoring of the population's immunity and the effectiveness of current vaccines to help design revaccination strategies for vulnerable immunosuppressed individuals, according to a study published inNature Biotechnologyin June.

The test takes less than 24 hours to perform and is scalable to use broadly in the population. It measures the activation of T cells, which are part of our adaptive immune response to SARS-CoV-2 infection or vaccination and help protect against severe disease outcomes or death.

"The assay we have created has the ability to measure the population's cellular immunity and broadly test the efficacy of novel vaccines," said one of the study's senior authors, Ernesto Guccione, PhD, Professor of Oncological Sciences, and Pharmacological Sciences, at The Tisch Cancer Institute at Mount Sinai. "We know that vulnerable populations don't always mount an antibody response, so measuring T cell activation is critical to assess the full extent of a person's immunity. Additionally,the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 variants like Omicron, which evade most of the neutralizing ability of antibodies, points to the need for assays that can measure T cells, which are more effective against emerging variants of concern."

病毒感染是媒体的长期保护ted by both antibodies and T cell response. Many recent studies point to the importance of determining T cell function in individuals who have recovered from or been vaccinated against COVID-19 to help design vaccination campaigns. However, before this study, measurement of T cell responses has been rarely performed because of the associated technical challenges.

In conducting this study, Mount Sinai researchers and partners at Duke-NUS Medical School optimized qPCR-based assays that had the potential to be globally scalable, sensitive, and accurate tests. Researchers narrowed their focus to the two assays that offered the most scalability. One, the qTACT assay, was accurate and sensitive but had a relatively longer processing time of 24 hours per 200 blood samples, a moderate price, and a medium level of technical skill. The other, the dqTACT assay, was accurate and had a reduced processing time and cost, and required minimal lab experience, making it easy to implement.

The dqTACT assay has recently been granted the European CE-IVD (in vitrodiagnostics) certification, while U.S. Food and Drug Administration and European Medicines Agency clinical validation is ongoing.

"The assays presented here are based on the ability of SARS-CoV-2 T cells to respond to peptides covering different proteins of the virus," said another senior author, Jordi Ochando, PhD, Assistant Professor of Oncological Sciences at the Tisch Cancer Institute at Mount Sinai and Assistant Professor of Medicine (Nephrology), and Pathology, Molecular, and Cell-Based Medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. "With the possibility of using different peptide pools, our approach represents a flexible strategy that can be easily implemented to detect the presence of T cells responding to different viral proteins. These T cells have an important role in protection from emerging mutant strains, thus immediately gauging the impact that viral mutations might have on cellular immunity."

Megan Schwarz, a graduate student at Icahn Mount Sinai and first author of the study, added, "Precise measurement of cellular responses underlying virus protection represents a crucial parameter of our levels of immune defense."

This new study was conducted using laboratory diagnostic services of Synlab and Hyris SystemTM, Hyris' signature qPCR technology.

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Story Source:

Materialsprovided byThe Mount Sinai Hospital / Mount Sinai School of Medicine.注意:内容可能被编辑风格d length.


Journal Reference:

  1. Megan Schwarz, Denis Torre, Daniel Lozano-Ojalvo, Anthony T. Tan, Tommaso Tabaglio, Slim Mzoughi, Rodrigo Sanchez-Tarjuelo, Nina Le Bert, Joey Ming Er Lim, Sandra Hatem, Kevin Tuballes, Carmen Camara, Eduardo Lopez-Granados, Estela Paz-Artal, Rafael Correa-Rocha, Alberto Ortiz, Marcos Lopez-Hoyos, Jose Portoles, Isabel Cervera, Maria Gonzalez-Perez, Irene Bodega-Mayor, Patricia Conde, Jesús Oteo-Iglesias, Alberto M. Borobia, Antonio J. Carcas, Jesús Frías, Cristóbal Belda-Iniesta, Jessica S. Y. Ho, Kemuel Nunez, Saboor Hekmaty, Kevin Mohammed, William M. Marsiglia, Juan Manuel Carreño, Arvin C. Dar, Cecilia Berin, Giuseppe Nicoletti, Isabella Della Noce, Lorenzo Colombo, Cristina Lapucci, Graziano Santoro, Maurizio Ferrari, Kai Nie, Manishkumar Patel, Vanessa Barcessat, Sacha Gnjatic, Jocelyn Harris, Robert Sebra, Miriam Merad, Florian Krammer, Seunghee Kim-schulze, Ivan Marazzi, Antonio Bertoletti, Jordi Ochando, Ernesto Guccione.Rapid, scalable assessment of SARS-CoV-2 cellular immunity by whole-blood PCR.Nature Biotechnology, 2022; DOI:10.1038/s41587-022-01347-6

Cite This Page:

The Mount Sinai Hospital / Mount Sinai School of Medicine. "Researchers develop a rapid test to measure immunity to COVID-19: New blood assay provides critical information for revaccination strategies in vulnerable individuals." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 14 June 2022. /releases/2022/06/220613111935.htm>.
The Mount Sinai Hospital / Mount Sinai School of Medicine. (2022, June 14). Researchers develop a rapid test to measure immunity to COVID-19: New blood assay provides critical information for revaccination strategies in vulnerable individuals.ScienceDaily. Retrieved August 21, 2023 from www.koonmotors.com/releases/2022/06/220613111935.htm
The Mount Sinai Hospital / Mount Sinai School of Medicine. "Researchers develop a rapid test to measure immunity to COVID-19: New blood assay provides critical information for revaccination strategies in vulnerable individuals." ScienceDaily. www.koonmotors.com/releases/2022/06/220613111935.htm (accessed August 21, 2023).

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