Illuminating Immunity to COVID-19 with Susanna Elledge

Episode Summary:

COVID-19 tests have become synonymous with jamming a swab up our nose to find out whether we have an active infection. But as we progress through this pandemic, a test that tells us whether people have antibodies against the virus will be massively important to creating public health initiatives and deciding who to vaccinate next. Unfortunately, these serology tests are exceedingly tedious to perform, inhibiting their widespread use. Realizing this problem, Susanna talks us through how she utilized protein engineering to create a novel serology test that is massively easier and quicker than traditional methods. Importantly, this test can be used in resource low settings to help end the pandemic worldwide.

Episode Notes:

About the Author

• Susanna’s scientist parents and love for the natural world drove her to research biology and chemistry.
• Susanna is most excited about adding new dimensions to biomolecules through bioconjugation to enhance their function.

Key Takeaways

• A serology test is used to see whether a person has antibodies against a specific pathogen.
• Positive serology tests can tell us whether getting the disease led to immunity, whether a vaccine worked, or whether a person is protected from new variants.
• This could be massively useful to help understand who is protected and who to vaccinate next to finally beat the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic.
• Traditional serology tests use hard to scale and overly laborious methods that hinder their adoption, especially in a low resource setting.
• Susanna used protein engineering and leveraged the shape of antibodies to develop an entirely new serology test.
• She engineered protein fusions that when simply mixed with a human sample such as serum or saliva, will generate light if antibodies against COVID-19 are present.
• This much easier test as well as the variety of human samples it can use as inputs make it a much more approachable option and enables its use in low-resource settings.

Translation

• Susanna and her colleagues are working to make this test available for field studies by making the protein easier to ship and making a handheld device that can measure the readout.
• Productizing this test will require more research in how to stabilize the components, incorporate controls, and most importantly, make it high-throughput.
• Susanna hopes to leverage this technology to help us beat the variants of SARS-CoV-2 and eventually rapidly test for other infectious diseases and autoimmunity.

First Author: Susanna Elledge

Paper: Engineering luminescent biosensors for point-of-care SARS-CoV-2 antibody detection