Scientists of the Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry named after Academicians Shemyakin and Ovchinnikov of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Competence Center of the National Technological Initiative have developed a quantitative test for the enzyme immunoassay of the neutralizing activity of antibodies to coronavirus, Izvestia reports.
The test will show how effectively the antibodies protect a person from getting infected with SARS-CoV-2 after vaccination or after recovery from COVID-19. This is the first such test system made in Russia, the publication notes.
“In addition to determining the number of antibodies, it is also important to know their quality, that is, the strength with which antibodies bind to the receptor-binding domain of the virus. This shows how successfully neutralizing antibodies prevent the virus from contacting the receptor, penetrating into the cell and replicating there. According to our research, the activity of the same number of antibodies can differ fivefold between individual cases,” said Georgy Skriabin, a virologist, researcher at the Laboratory of Biocatalysis of the Institute of Biochemistry of the RAS.
According to the developers, the result of the test will be available in an hour and a half. The test has already been administered on 160 blood samples collected for COVID-19 IgG antibodies testing.
Now the developers are preparing documents for the registration of tests with Roszdravnadzor (Federal Service for Surveillance in Healthcare).
