SARS-CoV-2 Inhibitor Screening Kit

Coronaviruses (CoVs) are enveloped non-segmented positive-sense single-stranded RNA viruses and can infect respiratory, gastrointestinal, hepatic and central nervous system of human and many other wild animals. Recently, a new severe acute respiratory syndrome β-coronavirus called SARS-CoV-2 (or 2019-nCoV) has emerged, which causes an epidemic of acute respiratory syndrome (called coronavirus human disease 2019 or COVID-19).

SARS-CoV-2 contains 4 structural proteins, including Envelope (E), Membrane (M), Nucleocapsid (N) and Spike (S), which is a transmembrane protein, composed of two subunits S1 and S2. The S1 subunit contains a receptor binding domain (RBD), which binds to the cell surface receptor Angiotensin-Converting Enzyme 2 (ACE2) present at the surface of epithelial cells, causing mainly infection of human respiratory cells.

The SARS-CoV-2 Inhibitor Screening Kit contains key reagents required to facilitate identification of SARS-CoV-2 inhibitors. This inhibitor screen is based on a colorimetric ELISA kit, which measures the binding of the RBD of the Spike S protein from SARS-CoV-2 to its human receptor ACE2. This assay allows to identify and characterize the effect of different inhibitory molecules including antibodies or chemicals on the prevention of binding of SARS-CoV-2 virus to any ACE2-expressing cells.