Innovative approach tracks SARS-COV-2 in blood to guide CoVID-19 treatment

Innovative approach tracks SARS-COV-2 in blood to guide CoVID-19 treatment

Mass General Brigham researchers have found that a method originally developed to detect cancer can guide future treatment of patients. The research is published inScience advances.

“In the early days of the pandemic, we wanted to see if our approach to isolating small cancerous vesicles could be adapted to isolate the SARS-CoV-2 virus from biofluids such as blood, stool and saliva,” said co-senior author Shannon L. “We quickly built an interdisciplinary team of experts to adapt our technology to push the boundaries of intact virus detection.”

Stott and colleagues in her laboratory and the laboratory of Genevieve M. Boland, MD, PhD, surgical director of the Termer Center for Targeted Therapies at MGH, found that their technique could only detect as three viral particles in 1 milliliter of blood. If patients with CoVID-19 were tested in more than 150 samples (103 plasma, 36 saliva and 29 stool samples).

As clinical needs change, the ability to serially monitor viral load in this manner has great potential to guide treatment of patients with long Covid," said Stott. "This versatile technology could also have widespread applications in viral monitoring for current and future infectious diseases."

Shannon L. Stott

Authorship:In addition to Stott and Boland, the authors of the Mass are General Brigham Daniel C. Rabe, Adarsh Choudhury, Dasol Lee, Evelyn G. Luciani, Uyen K. Ho, Sara Veiga, William A. Michaud, Diane Capen, Elizabeth A. Flynn, Nicola, Nicola, Nicola Hartmann, Alona Muzikansky, Marcia B. Goldberg, Douglas S. Kwon, Xu Yu, Aaron F. Carlin, Jochen K. Lennerz, Peggy S. Lai and Sayed Ali Rabi. Additional authors include Alex E. Clark, Jeffrey E. Glasgow, Aaron F. Garretson, Yves Theriault, James A. Wells, and Anh N. Hoang.

Declarations:Mass General Brigham has filed a US patent application (US 2023,334,830) on behalf of Stott, Boland, Rabi and Rabe to isolate the SARS-COV-2 using microfluidics. This application is pending at the time of publication. Stott serves as an advisory board member for Streck, LLC, who is not involved in this work.

Financing:This work was supported by National Center for Advances in Translational Sciences Grant U18-Tr003793, National Center for Advances in Translational Sciences UL1-Tr002541 (Harvard Catalyst, Mass General Brigham Biobank), NIH Radx-Rad Discoveries 1U24LM0137555555555-01” & Data: Consortium Coordinating Center Program Organization ", National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Grant P30-AI036214 (San Diego Center for AIDS Research, UCSD), National Cancer Institute Grant R01-CA226871, National Cancer Institute (Grant F32-CA236417),) D'Arbeloff MGH Research Scholar Award, and American Cancer Society (Grant 132030-RSG-18-108-01-TBG). Access to patient samples was facilitated by Masscpr through the General Brigham Biobank (UL1-Tr002541). Samples were collected at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, through the Global Travepinet (GTEN) program as part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) CoVID response (U01CK000490 and U01CK000633). TEM imaging (transmission electron microscopy of intestinal disease (DK043351).

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