A research group led by Professor Mitsuru Murata of Keio University School of Medicine has collaborated with the Institute of Medical Biology Co., Ltd. to quickly and multi-specimen neutralizing antibodies that reflect the ability to protect against infection against the new coronavirus. Succeeded in developing a kit to be used.
Generally, when infected with a virus, a protective factor called an antibody is produced in the living body.Antibodies specifically recognize and bind to different parts of the virus, but their ability to protect against infection varies from antibody to antibody.Apart from this, an antibody that binds to a site important for virus activity (Spike protein), inhibits its function, and has the ability to inactivate the virus is called a "neutralizing antibody", and if this amount is large, High protection against infection.Since the existing neutralizing antibody measurement kit is manual, there is a problem in processing capacity, and it is necessary to meet the demand for multi-sample neutralizing antibody measurement due to the spread of vaccines.
This time, the research group has developed a kit that can automatically measure the amount of neutralizing antibody by the amount of luminescence by the "CLEIA method" using a luminescent substrate.The presence of the neutralizing antibody reduced the amount of luminescence, which made it possible to quantify the degree of inhibition of the virus's action.The kit can be mounted on the domestic automatic clinical testing device STACIA® manufactured by LSI Medience Corporation, which realizes a maximum of 1 tests per hour and can measure quickly within 270 minutes from sampling.Since this test method does not contain viruses, it can be used in ordinary laboratories and is extremely safe.In addition, the neutralizing antibody titer in the measured sample showed a high correlation with the infection neutralization test using the actual new coronavirus.
The developed kit can measure a wide range of samples from a small number of samples to a large number of samples.It is said that a wide range of usefulness can be considered, such as evaluation of neutralizing antibodies in individual patients, changes in antibody titers after vaccination, and studies to investigate the optimal vaccination interval.
