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A trans-complementation system for SARS-CoV-2

Zhang, X.; Liu, Y.; Liu, J.; Bailey, A. L.; Plante, K. S.; Plante, J. A.; Zou, J.; Xia, H.; Bopp, N. E.; Aguilar, P. V.; Ren, P.; Menachery, V. D.; Diamond, M. S.; Weaver, S. C.; Xie, X.; Shi, P.-Y.

2021-01-19 microbiology
10.1101/2021.01.16.426970 bioRxiv
Show abstract

The biosafety level-3 (BSL-3) requirement to culture severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is a bottleneck for research and countermeasure development. Here we report a trans-complementation system that produces single-round infectious SARS-CoV-2 that recapitulates authentic viral replication. We demonstrate that the single-round infectious SARS-CoV-2 can be used at BSL-2 laboratories for high-throughput neutralization and antiviral testing. The trans-complementation system consists of two components: a genomic viral RNA containing a deletion of ORF3 and envelope gene, and a producer cell line expressing the two deleted genes. Trans-complementation of the two components generates virions that can infect naive cells for only one round, but does not produce wild-type SARS-CoV-2. Hamsters and K18-hACE2 transgenic mice inoculated with the complementation-derived virions exhibited no detectable disease, even after intracranial inoculation with the highest possible dose. The results suggest that the trans-complementation platform can be safely used at BSL-2 laboratories for research and countermeasure development.

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