Immunostep develops a new serological test capable of differentiate vaccinated individuals from those who have suffered from Covid-19 natural infection

Immunostep biotechnological company in Spain works in collaboration with a team of researchers from the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), and they announced the launch of a new antibody test that detects three types of antibodies against four proteins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus with a single blood sample and 99% of reliability. Unlike other tests on the market, this technology allows researchers to obtain qualitative and quantitative information about individuals who have suffered from Covid-19 natural infection and individuals who have developed antibodies after vaccination, by performing one simple test.

The main advantage of this test, based on the flow cytometry technique and developed for diagnostic use, is the detection of different antibodies against different antigens in a single tube, which means that is able to identify and quantify different types of antibodies produced against four viral SARS-CoV-2 proteins.

The assay is able to identify IgG, IgA, IgM antibodies against these four SARS-CoV-2 proteins simultaneously: Spike protein and its RBD domain, two very important proteins because they are the main target of currently available vaccines, the nucleocapsid protein (N), and the main viral protease (Mpro) which plays a vital role in viral replication.

And this is important because, after vaccination, antibodies are only produced against the protein that the vaccine targets (which is the Spike protein and its RBD domain in most of the cases), while a person who has been infected also generates antibodies against the Mpro and NP proteins. For this reason, unlike most other available tests, which targets a single type of antigen, this test is able to differentiate between different immune response profiles to SARS-CoV-2 (including disease severity profiles).

Immunostep R&D department declared that they are not aware of the existence on the international market of an equally complete test so far, with the capacity to provide a similar amount of simultaneous information on the immune response to the virus. The test arrives to complete the company’s serological solutions line by providing a technology within its speciality, flow cytometry.

As Covid-19 is a very recent disease, there are still many unanswered questions about the type of immune response that is generated against the virus. In fact, as the pandemic has progressed, different clinical manifestations have been detected, and we need to work on how associate all those clinical manifestations with different intensities of the components of the immune response. Therefore, detecting the immune response to different viral proteins will help researchers to better understand immunity to SARS-CoV-2, which will be very useful for early classification of patients.

This assay presents a great opportunity as an essential tool for monitoring the immune response against SARS-CoV-2 after vaccination, and for the exhaustive knowledge of the characteristics of the response in different individuals, as well as its duration over time