Middle East respiratory coronavirus (MERS-CoV) spike (S) protein vesicular stomatitis virus pseudoparticle neutralization assays offer a reliable alternative to the conventional neutralization assay in human seroepidemiological studies.

Content Provider	Europe PMC
Author	Lester, Sandra Harcourt, Jennifer Whitt, Michael Al-Abdely, Hail M. Midgley, Claire M. Alkhamis, Abdulrahim M. Aziz Jokhdar, Hani A. Assiri, Abdullah M. Tamin, Azaibi Thornburg, Natalie
Copyright Year	2019
Abstract	Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) is a novel zoonotic coronavirus that was identified in 2012. MERS-CoV infection in humans can result in an acute, severe respiratory disease and in some cases multi-organ failure; the global mortality rate is approximately 35 %. The MERS-CoV spike (S) protein is a major target for neutralizing antibodies in infected patients. The MERS-CoV microneutralization test (MNt) is the gold standard method for demonstrating prior infection. However, this method requires the use of live MERS-CoV in biosafety level 3 (BSL-3) containment. The present work describes the generation and validation of S protein-bearing vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) pseudotype particles (VSV-MERS-CoV-S) in which the VSV glycoprotein G gene has been replaced by the luciferase reporter gene, followed by the establishment of a pseudoparticle-based neutralization test to detect MERS-CoV neutralizing antibodies under BSL-2 conditions. Using a panel of human sera from confirmed MERS-CoV patients, the VSV-MERS-CoV particle neutralization assay produced results that were highly comparable to those of the microneutralization test using live MERS-CoV. The results suggest that the VSV-MERS-CoV-S pseudotype neutralization assay offers a highly specific, sensitive and safer alternative method to detect MERS-CoV neutralizing antibodies in human sera.
Related Links	https://europepmc.org/backend/ptpmcrender.fcgi?accid=PMC7472544&blobtype=pdf
Journal	Access Microbiology [Access Microbiol]
Volume Number	1
DOI	10.1099/acmi.0.000057
PubMed Central reference number	PMC7472544
Issue Number	9
PubMed reference number	32974558
e-ISSN	25168290
Language	English
Publisher	Microbiology Society
Publisher Date	2019-09-11
Access Restriction	Open
Rights License	This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial License. © 2019 The Authors
Subject Keyword	Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) vesicular stomatitis virus pseudoparticle luciferase neutralizing antibodies microneutralization test (MNt)
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Microbiology Microbiology (medical)