Role of serology in the next phase of COVID-19 investigation and response

The current COVID-19 pandemic has led to large-scale lockdown around the world to prevent further spread of the disease. From the initial effort of rapid diagnosis and containment, the international community is now facing the challenge of an effective and pragmatic “exit” strategy to balance the public health risk versus the huge economic losses as a result of the travel ban and lockdown measures globally.

Among the many challenges of ongoing COVID-19 investigation and responses, three stand out as particularly pressing:

• A good understanding of protective immunity and longevity of immunity to better advise/design “exit” strategy and policy
• Rapid development and deployment of COVID-19 vaccine(s) and a reliable testing platform capable of assessing and monitoring vaccine efficacy en masse
• Investigation of virus origin and the early animal-to-human transmission events to prevent future outbreaks

Serology will play a key role in all three areas. In this presentation, different serological platforms currently used for COVID-19 testing will be reviewed and compared together with the introduction of a novel platform, the surrogate virus neutralization test (sVNT), recently developed by GenScript.

Key learning objectives:

• An overview of the COVID-19 outbreak and SARS-CoV-2 virology
• Analysis on the challenges for COVID-19 investigation and research
• How serology plays an important role in the next phase of COVID-19 research
• Methodology of neutralization antibody testing that is immunoglobulin agnostic and species independent for increased sensitivity and specificity

Who should attend:

• Clinical diagnostics labs interested in fast and accurate tests for COVID-19 immunity
• Vaccine and drug development groups who not only require the measurement of an immune response to vaccination but also need functional antibodies that block the interaction between RBD and ACE2 receptor in small animal models and human samples
• Basic research labs studying small molecule, antibody or peptide interactions with RBD as a means of inhibiting its interaction with ACE2

Certificate of attendance
All webinar participants can request a certificate of attendance and a learning outcomes summary document for continuing education purposes.