Polymer microarrays rapidly identify competitive adsorbents of virus-like particles

Blok, Andrew J.; Gurnani, Pratik; Xenopoulos, Alex; Burroughs, Laurence; Duncan, Joshua; Urbanowicz, Richard A.; Tsoleridis, Theocharis; M�ller-Kr�uter, Helena; Strecker, Thomas; Ball, Jonathan K.; Alexander, Cameron; Alexander, Morgan R.

Abstract

The emergence of SARS-CoV-2 highlights the global need for platform technologies to enable the rapid development of diagnostics, vaccines, treatments, and personal protective equipment (PPE). However, many current technologies require the detailed mechanistic knowledge of specific material-virion interactions before they can be employed, for example, to aid in the purification of vaccine components or in the design of a more effective PPE. Here, we show that an adaption of a polymer microarray method for screening bacterial-surface interactions allows for the screening of polymers for desirable material-virion interactions. Nonpathogenic virus-like particles including fluorophores are exposed to the arrays in an aqueous buffer as a simple model of virions carried to the surface in saliva/sputum. Competitive binding of Lassa and Rubella virus-like particles is measured to probe the relative binding properties of a selection of copolymers. This provides the first step in the development of a method for the discovery of novel materials with promise for viral binding, with the next being development of this method to assess absolute viral adsorption and assessment of the attenuation of the activity of live virus, which we propose would be part of a material scale up step carried out in high containment facilities, alongside the use of more complex media to represent biological fluids.

Citation

Blok, A. J., Gurnani, P., Xenopoulos, A., Burroughs, L., Duncan, J., Urbanowicz, R. A., …Alexander, M. R. (2020). Polymer microarrays rapidly identify competitive adsorbents of virus-like particles. Biointerphases, 15(6), Article 061005. https://doi.org/10.1116/6.0000586

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Oct 15, 2020
• Online Publication Date: Nov 17, 2020
• Publication Date: Nov 17, 2020
• Deposit Date: Nov 23, 2020
• Publicly Available Date: Nov 25, 2020
• Journal: Biointerphases
• Print ISSN: 1934-8630
• Electronic ISSN: 1559-4106
• Publisher: American Institute of Physics
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 15
• Issue: 6
• Article Number: 061005
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1116/6.0000586
• Keywords: General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology; General Physics and Astronomy; General Materials Science; General Chemistry
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/5064613
• Publisher URL: https://avs.scitation.org/doi/10.1116/6.0000586
• Additional Information: Received: 2020-08-27; Accepted: 2020-10-15; Published: 2020-11-17