VirScan tool can help researchers detect coronavirus for vaccine development

A research tool known as VirScan will be able to detect evidence of coronavirus from a single drop of blood.

Geneticist Steve Elledge, who helped develop VirScan, has added the virus, formally known as SARS-CoV-2, to VirScan’s library of pathogens. This action could potentially help researchers working on new vaccines or identify previously undetected cases of the disease. Two or three academic research labs will be using VirScan by mid-April with other labs to follow.

“This is a community resource. It is all about making analysis of the coronavirus happen in real-time in the places that need it,” Elledge, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, said.

VirScan works by detecting antibodies — or immune system proteins — that can latch onto a virus and hasten its destruction. Antibodies remain in the blood for years after infection, guarding the body in case that same virus returns. Scientists are now identifying where on SARS-CoV-2 human antibodies attach. With VirScan, researchers could figure out which spots on the virus to target by examining the blood of people who have recovered from COVID-19.

With VirScan, “we can ask in a super-fast, high-throughput way which regions of the virus are targeted by an antibody response specific to SARS-CoV-2.” Galit Alter, an immunologist at Harvard Medical School and the Ragon Institute, said.

Clinical trials of the earliest candidate vaccines for COVID-19 have already begun. Insights from Virscan could make vaccines more effective.