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New COVID-19 test can find antibodies’ ability to fight Omicron variant in minutes

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By Stephen Beech via SWNS

A new rapid test can identify antibody effectiveness against COVID-19 variants, including Omicron, in just 15 minutes.

Scientists say the quick and simple test could measure patient immunity against multipleCOVID-19. variants - such as Omicron and Delta at once - and also indicate which treatments to use.

Biomedical engineers at Duke University devised the test to quickly and easily assess how well a person’s neutralizing antibodies fight infection from multiple variants of COVID-19.

They say the test could potentially tell doctors how protected a patient is from new variants and those currently circulating in a community or, conversely, which antibodies to treat aCOVID-19. patient.

Doctor Cameron Wolfe, Associate Professor of medicine at Duke University School of Medicine, said: “We currently really have no rapid way of assessing variants, neither their presence in an individual nor the ability of antibodies we possess to make a difference.

“It's one of the lingering fears that, as we successfully vaccinate more and more people, a variant may emerge that more radically evades vaccine-induced antibody neutralization.

"And if that fear came true - if Omicron turned out to be a worst-case scenario - how would we know quickly enough?”

A new test can quickly test the ability of antibodies to fight different variants of COVID-19 simultaneously. (Duke University via SWNS)

Professor Ashutosh Chilkoti, Chair of Biomedical Engineering at Duke, said: “While developing a point-of-care test forCOVID-19 antibodies and biomarkers, we realized there could be some benefit to being able to detect the ability of antibodies to neutralize specific variants, so we built a test around that idea.

“It only took us a week or two to incorporate the Delta variant in our test, and it could easily be expanded to also include the Omicron variant.

"All we need is the spike protein of this variant, which many groups across the world, including our group at Duke, are feverishly working to produce.”

The team called their test theCOVID-19 Variant Spike-ACE2-Competitive Antibody Neutralization assay or CoVariant-SCAN for short.

The test’s technology hinges on a polymer brush coating that acts as a sort of non-stick coating to stop anything but the desired biomarkers from attaching to the test slide when wet.

Prof Chilkoti explained that the high effectiveness of the non-stick shield makes the test "incredibly sensitive" to even low levels of its targets.

The approach allows researchers to print different molecular traps on different areas of the slide to catch multiple biomarkers at once.

Researchers print fluorescent human ACE2 proteins - the cellular targets of the virus’s infamous spike protein - on a slide.

They also print spike proteins specific to each variant ofCOVID-19 at different specific locations.

When the test is run, the ACE2 proteins detach from the slide and are caught by the spike proteins still attached to the slide, causing the slide to glow.

But in the presence of neutralizing antibodies, the spike proteins are no longer able to grab onto the ACE2 proteins, making the slide glow less, indicating the effectiveness of the antibodies.

By printing different variants of theCOVID-19 spike protein on different portions of the slide, scientists can see how effective the antibodies are at preventing each variant from latching onto their human cellular target simultaneously.

A graphic explaining how the new test works. (Duke University via SWNS)

The Duke team tested the technology in several ways. They also tested plasma taken from healthy vaccinated people and those currently infected with the virus.

Jake Heggestad, a Ph.D. student working in Prof Chilkoti's lab, said: “In all of our tests, the results largely mimicked what we’ve been seeing in the literature.

“And in this case, not finding anything new is a good sign, because it means our test is working just as well as the methods currently being used.”

The researchers say that the critical difference between the CoVariant-SCAN and current methods is the speed and ease with which it can produce results.

Typical current approaches require isolating live virus and culturing cells, which can take 24 hours or more and requires a wide variety of safety precautions and specially trained technicians.

The CoVariant-SCAN, in contrast, does not require a live virus, is easy to use in most settings and takes less than an hour - potentially just 15 minutes - to produce accurate results.

Now the Duke team is working to streamline the technique into a microfluidic chip that could be mass-produced and report results with only a few drops of blood, plasma or other liquid sample containing antibodies.

The same approach has already been proven to work on a similar test that can distinguishCOVID-19 from other coronaviruses.

Dr. Wolfe said: “We would love to have real-time visibility of the emerging variants and understand who still has functional immunity.

“Additionally, this hints that there might be a technique whereby you could quickly assess which synthetic monoclonal antibody might be best to administer to a patient with a particular emergent variant.

"Currently we really have no real-time way of knowing that, so we rely on epidemiological data that can track weeks behind.”

He added: “The reverse is also true.

“To be able to pre-screen an individual's antibodies and predict whether they were sufficiently protected against a particular variant they are perhaps about to run into while traveling, or that is emerging in their area.

"We have no way of doing that at the present time. But a test like the CoVariant-SCAN could make all of these scenarios possible.”

The findings were published in the journal Science Advances.

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