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.

The increasing rate of bacterial resistance creates a challenging environment for the development of therapies for bacterial infections. Bacterial skin infections are one of the leading manifestations of infectious diseases in the world. Staphylococcus aureus—both Methicillin-resistant (MRSA) and Methicillin-Sensitive (MSSA) strains—is the leading cause of skin and soft tissue infections in the USA. It is the leading cause of hospital-associated (HA) and community-associated (CA) infections worldwide.

In recent years, animal-to-human crossovers have been observed with Nipah virus in Malaysia, and 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.