Comparison of Subgenomic and Total RNA in SARS-CoV-2-Challenged Rhesus Macaques
Gabriel Dagotto, Noe B. Mercado, David R. Martinez, Yixuan J. Hou, Joseph P. Nkolola, Robert H. Carnahan, James E. Crowe, Ralph S. Baric, Dan H. Barouch
Abstract
Developing therapeutic and prophylactic countermeasures for the SARS-CoV-2 virus is a public health priority. During challenge studies, respiratory viruses are delivered and sampled from the same anatomical location. It is therefore important to distinguish actively replicating virus from input challenge virus. The most common assay for detecting SARS-CoV-2 virus, reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) targeting nucleocapsid total RNA, cannot distinguish neutralized input virus from replicating virus. In this study, we assess SARS-CoV-2 subgenomic RNA as a potential measure of replicating virus in rhesus macaques.