Genetic System Could Expedite Coronavirus Vaccine, Diagnosis

April 08, 2020 - A team from the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston (UTMB) has developed a reverse genetic system for coronavirus that could help researchers evaluate and discover potential vaccines, diagnose patients, and explore whether or how the virus has evolved.

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A reverse genetic system is one of the most useful tools for combatting and understanding viruses, the research team stated. In a study published in Cell Host & Microbe, the group describes their approach and its potential to accelerate understanding of and solutions for COVID-19.

“This technology can significantly reduce how long it takes to evaluate developing vaccines and ultimately bring them to the market,” said Xuping Xie, the UTMB Research Scientist who designed and developed the genetic system. “UTMB will be very happy to make this technology widely available to both academia and industry researchers working to quickly develop countermeasures.”

The system enables researchers to make the virus in the lab and manipulate it in a petri dish. This approach has allowed the UTMB team to engineer a version of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that is labeled neon green. When the virus infects a cell, the infected cell turns green.

“The labeled virus could be used to rapidly determine whether a patient has already been infected by the new coronavirus or evaluate how well developing vaccines are inducing antibodies that block infection of the virus. The level of antibodies induced by a vaccine is the most important parameter in predicting how well a vaccine works,” said Pei-Young Shi, I.H. Kempner professor of Human Genetics at UTMB.

“The neon green labeled virus system allows us to test patients’ samples in 12 hours in a high-throughput manner that tests many samples at once. In contrast, the conventional method can only test a few specimens at a time with a long turnaround time of a week.”

The new tool could provide critical insight into how the virus has evolved, leading to a more comprehensive understanding of where it could go next.

“The genetic system allows us to study the evolution of the new coronavirus. This will help us to understand how the virus jumped from its original host bat species to humans,” said Vineet Menachery, assistant professor at UTMB and co-senior author of the study.

“It remains to be determined if an intermediate host is required for the host switch from the original bats to humans for the new coronavirus. The system has provided a critical tool for the research community.”

Researchers have received grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as well as philanthropic support from multiple organizations to implement the technology for diagnosis and vaccine evaluation. The study was a multidisciplinary effort, with players from different areas coming together to develop a viable genetic system.

“The collective effort from teams with complementary expertise worked together to deliver this exciting study. We will expand the team science to areas of clinical care and patient diagnosis by deploying the technology for serological testing,” said Dr. Ben Raimer, President ad Interim of UTMB.

The team noted that in the future, researchers can apply their genetic system to other viruses and outbreaks, significantly reducing the time it takes to combat and understand new illnesses.

“This will not be the last emerging virus that plagues humanity,” said Shi.

“In the past two decades, we’ve seen other coronaviruses like SARS and MERS, as well as other viruses like Zika, Ebola and others. It’s critically important to have a system that can be used for any new future or re-emerging viruses so that we can very quickly respond to the pathogens and protect peoples’ health.”