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The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is a major global public health concern. Although rapid point-of-care testing for detecting viral antigen is important for management of the outbreak, the current antigen tests are less sensitive than nucleic acid testing. In our current study, we produce monoclonal antibodies (mAb) that exclusively react with SARS-CoV-2 and exhibit no cross-reactivity with other human coronaviruses including SARS-CoV. Molecular modeling suggest that the mAbs bind to epitopes present on the exterior surface of the nucleocapsid, making them suitable for detecting SARS-CoV-2 in clinical samples. We further select the optimal pair of anti-SARS-CoV-2 NP mAbs using ELISA, and then use this mAb pair to develop immunochromatographic assay augmented with silver amplification technology. Our mAbs recognize the variants of concern (501Y.V1-V3) that are currently in circulation. Due to their high performance, the mAbs of this study can serve as good candidates for developing antigen detection kits for COVID-19.

Articles you may be interested inDesign of multipulse Thomson scattering diagnostic for SST-1 tokamak Rev. Sci. Instrum. 78, 043507 (2007); 10.1063/1.2724775 Detailed in situ laser calibration of the infrared imaging video bolometer for the JT-60U tokamak Rev. Sci. Instrum. 77, 10E515 (2006); 10.1063/1.2336471High-resolution ruby laser Thomson scattering diagnostic for the W7-AS stellarator Rev.A YAG laser Thomson scattering system has been developed to measure the time evolution of electron temperature (T e ) and density (n e ) profiles in the JT-60U. Presently this system provides T e and n e periodically every 100 ms ͑20 ms at the minimum͒ at 15 spatial channels. A six spectrum channel polychromator, which is a successive interference filter type, was designed to measure a wide T e range ͑20 eV-20 keV͒ by using five channels. The sixth channel is used for calibration by Rayleigh scattering. However, we also used the Rayleigh channel to measure T e and n e since the stray light level was very low. As a result, we were able to measure temperatures below 20 eV. The temperature of the silicon avalanche photodiode ͑APD͒ is stabilized by a Péltier element so that the gain is kept constant within Ϯ0.5%. The stable performance of the APD enables accurate T e and n e measurement. During plasma operation, the electron temperature is measured over a wide range from the low temperature plasmas in the runaway plasma current tail generated by a killer pellet to the high temperatures of high performance negative shear plasmas.

Chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection was shown to cause hepatic steatosis or suppression of serum lipid levels. However, little is known about the changes in hepatic steatosis following HCV eradication. We aimed to evaluate this issue using the controlled attenuation parameter (CAP), which was recently shown to provide a standardized non-invasive measure of hepatic steatosis. We enrolled 70 patients with chronic HCV infections and steatosis (CAP of over 248 dB/m) who had achieved a sustained viral response at 12 weeks after discontinuation of antiviral treatment using direct-acting antivirals (DAA). We then evaluated the state of hepatic steatosis before and after HCV eradication. We also investigated the changes in serum parameters such as cholesterol and glucose levels. The median value of CAP level decreased significantly after HCV eradication from 273 dB/m to 265 dB/m (P = 0.034). Also, LDL and HDL cholesterol levels increased significantly after HCV eradication (P = 0.002 and P = 0.027, respectively). In conclusion, a decrease in hepatic steatosis after HCV eradication with DAA was revealed in chronic hepatitis C patients with significant steatosis. Cancellation of the viral effect is a possible underlying cause of hepatic steatosis improvement and increase in HDL and LDL cholesterol levels.