Pharmaceutical drug developers and healthcare researchers need innovative tools to understand COVID-19 immune response and validate vaccines and therapeutics critical to managing the pandemic. The newest development in assay technology, the NAB-Sure SARS-CoV-2 Neutralizing Antibody Test Kit from Spear Bio (www.spear.bio), is one such tool.
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Developed by former Harvard University scientists based at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, the NAB-Sure SARS-CoV-2 test kit provides a surrogate virus neutralization assay with much higher sensitivity than standard ELISA test formats and cell-based approaches. Spear Bio’s unique approach and assay performance means the NAB-Sure SARS-CoV-2 Assay can work with diverse types of biospecimens and sizes of samples, including serum, plasma, and micro-sampling techniques like dried blood spots (DBS), providing consistent laboratory-to-laboratory results even when comparing different sample types.
The NAB-Sure™ SARS-CoV-2 test kit simplifies testing for SARS-CoV-2 neutralizing antibodies (NAbs), producing qualitative and quantitative NAb titer measurements using real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR). The assay has the accuracy of cell-based assays like the plaque-reduction neutralization testing (PRNT), the gold standard for NAb detection, without the safety concerns and long, complicated workflows. What’s more is the assay’s capability to analyze small volumes of serum or plasma enables new micro-sampling techniques to be leveraged during collection.
The NAB-Sure™ SARS-CoV-2 Assay provides an inter-laboratory coefficient of variation (CV) of 4.8% even for extremely small test sample sizes such as a DBS from a finger prick. The test results can help researchers validate vaccines and develop predictive models for antibody durability. Automation compatibility combined with industry-leading accuracy for small volumes promotes high throughput and reduces cost at every stage of testing: sample collection, detection, and analysis.
Spear Bio CTO and co-founder, Feng Xuan, explains: “Conventional cell-based methods for SARS-CoV-2 neutralizing antibody measurement have poor lab-to-lab consistency. NAB-Sure™ SARS-CoV-2 Assay is the first cell-free NAb assay with superior sensitivity and precision. This performance combined with simplified workflows is an opportunity to standardize neutralizing antibody measurements, which is essential for the vaccine validation needed at this stage of the pandemic.”