Opportunities for the use of immuno-PCR in SARS-CoV-2 diagnosis
Authors: Rubalsky O.V. ,   Astrakhan State Medical University, Astrakhan, Russian Federation, Daudova A.D. , Abdrakhmanova R.O. , Baeva G.R. , Bashkina O.A. , Aleshkin A.V. , Gushchin V.A. , Samotrueva M.A. , Vakalova E.V. , Seidova H.K. , Karnaukh M.M. , E.O.Rubalsky E.O. ,   Astrakhan State Medical University, Astrakhan, Russian Federation,   Astrakhan State Medical University, Astrakhan, Russian Federation,   Astrakhan State Medical University, Astrakhan, Russian Federation,   Astrakhan State Medical University, Astrakhan, Russian Federation,   G.N.Gabrichevsky Moscow Research Institute for Epidemiology and Microbiology, Federal Service for Surveillance on Consumer Rights Protection and Human Wellbeing, Moscow, Russian Federation,   N.F.Gamaleya National Research Centre for Epidemiology and Microbiology, Moscow, Russian Federation,   Astrakhan State Medical University, Astrakhan, Russian Federation,   Center of Hygiene and Epidemiology in Astrakhan Oblast, Astrakhan, Russian Federation,   Astrakhan State Medical University, Astrakhan, Russian Federation,   G.N.Gabrichevsky Moscow Research Institute for Epidemiology and Microbiology, Federal Service for Surveillance on Consumer Rights Protection and Human Wellbeing, Moscow, Russian Federation,   Astrakhan State Medical University, Astrakhan, Russian Federation,   G.N.Gabrichevsky Moscow Research Institute for Epidemiology and Microbiology, Federal Service for Surveillance on Consumer Rights Protection and Human Wellbeing, Moscow, Russian Federation
Published: July 2024

One of the main biological characteristics of SARS-CoV-2 is its remarkable ability to adapt to new environmental conditions. Accelerated evolution of the COVID-19 pathogen complicates anti-epidemic measures, including the need to update the antigenic composition of vaccines and maintain current vaccination measures, complicates the prognosis of the infection course, and reduces the efficacy of drugs based on monoclonal antibodies and specific antiviral inhibitors. Under these conditions, the search for new approaches to monitoring clinically and epidemiologically significant variants of the virus that escape the factors of humoral immunity, as well as to the accelerated development of relevant immunobiological preparations, becomes important. This in turn requires the use of approaches to assess the serological properties of new variants, such as neutralization reactions using live infectious virus or immunochemical methods with limited antigen detection. Immuno-PCR (iPCR) is a method which is lacked majority of virus neutralization reaction and immunochemical methods (ELISA and LFT) disadvantages. The iPCR method has many modifications aimed at increasing specificity while reducing background amplification, simplifying staging, and multiplexing. Taking into account the high sensitivity of iPCR, it is possible not only to measure the exact amount of antigen, but also to use the diagnostics in the minimum quantities available, for example, in clinical samples. This fact makes iPCR method high-promising in personalized medicine field. Key words: SARS-CoV-2, coronavirus evolution, immuno-PCR, humoral immunity