To address the urgent and immediate need for R&D tools for the fight against the public health threat from SARS-CoV-2, IBT Bioservices now offers a pseudotype virus system to assay inhibition of infectivity in a BSL-2 environment. Briefly, Vesicular Stomatitis virus (VSV) glycoprotein gene (G) has been substituted with SARS-CoV-2 Spike Protein (rVSV pseudotyped SARS-CoV-2 Spike). The recombinant rVSV-DG SARS-CoV-2 Spike has been incorporated into a convenient luciferase-based neutralization assay for evaluating the efficacy of drug candidates that target Spike-mediated infection (Figure 1). This system is similar to previously published and validated VSV pseudotype platform for Ebolavirus and Marburgvirus^1,2,3.

In recent years, animal-to-human crossovers have been observed with Nipha virus in Malaysia, Ebola and Marburg viruses in Africa. SARS-CoV-2 is just one among three 21^st century animal-to-human Coronavirus spillover events. Considering the high rate of mutation among RNA viruses, the number of animal coronaviruses, and the mixing of animals into densely populated areas spillover is not unexpected.