Dados do Trabalho

Título

A novel epitope-based chimeric protein applied to a urine-based ELISA of COVID-19.

Introdução

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, has underscored the crucial role of serological tests as a strategy to control the disease, which can indicate the presence of antibodies from a previous infection or vaccination. Therefore, a suitable recombinant protein is essential for development of a reliable test. Distinct studies of in vitro diagnostics have used single recombinant proteins; however, a stronger immunogenicity with higher accuracy could be achieved using epitope-based chimeric proteins.

Objetivo (s)

In this sense, the present study aims to design a multi-epitope of Spike and Nucleocapsid antigens of COVID-19 virus by immunoinformatics methods.

Material e Métodos

The Chimeric protein was evaluated for the diagnosis of COVID-19 by the presence of specific antibodies in the sera and/or urine. Ten Spike and four Nucleocapsid B-cell epitopes were selected and used to construct the chimera (N4S10-SC2), which was analyzed in a recombinant format through an ELISA assay.

Resultados e Conclusão

The main findings of this study were that the chimeric protein was able to detect anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in the sera and urine samples. In addition, a high efficiency assay was obtained for multi-target epitopes, enabling the possibility to express proteins in a simpler prokaryotic system. In conclusion, the use of a chimeric protein, and also, a urine-based ELISA assay could be considered as a convenient tool for screening the presence of specific antibodies, and overcome the challenges associated with sample collection and the need for recombinant proteins produced using eukaryotic expression systems.

Palavras-chave

ELISA assay; recombinant chimeric protein; COVID-19; urine; SARS-CoV-2.

Agradecimentos

CAPES, CNPq and FAPEMIG.