Immunotyping of COVID-19 patient sera using novel protein complementation-based assays

In order to help deal with COVID-19 pandemic, there is an urgent need for development of fast, reliable, and sensitive tests that will be capable of detecting IgG and IgM proteins directly in people’s blood. Our novel test for detection of IgG and IgM proteins in the blood offers several major advantages compared to other tests currently on the market: (i) highly quantitative; (ii) compatible to large scale investigation; (iii) fast performance; (iv) limited procedures; (v) small volume of blood sample required; (vi) no need for special equipment beside a common plate reader, and (vii) no need for special training for operators. This test can be used not only for clinical testing but also for large scale epidemic investigations. Moreover, once the framework has been set up, the same strategy can also be applied to monitor other infectious diseases. Our collaboration with Cyclica will greatly expand this work by allowing us to employing predictive modeling of the relevant protein-protein interactions, such as predict viral S protein-neutralizing compounds.

Faculty Supervisor:

Igor Stagljar

Student:

Luka Drecun;Ingrid Grozavu

Partner:

Cyclica

Discipline:

Biochemistry / Molecular biology

Sector:

Professional, scientific and technical services

University:

University of Toronto