Antibody Discovery for Development of a Serotyping Dengue Virus NS1 Capture Assay

Dengue virus (DENV) infections are a significant public health burden in tropical and sub-tropical regions of the world. Infections are caused by four different but antigenically related viruses which result in four DENV serotypes. The multifaceted nature of DENV pathogenesis hinders the sensitivity of assays designed for the diagnosis of infection. Different markers can be optimally detected at different stages of infection. Of particular clinical importance is the identification of acute viremia during the febrile phase of infection which is pivotal for management of infection. Non-structural protein 1 (NS1) has been identified as a good early surrogate marker of infection with possible applications in epidemiological surveillance and the development of blood screening assays. This contribution is towards using serotype-specificity to achieve specific and more sensitive diagnostic detection of DENV NS1. The general aim of this work is to isolate immune-reagents that can be used to develop an assay with improved sensitivity of DENV NS1 detection in a diagnostic setting. In this work, we sought to isolate serotype-specific antibodies that discern discreet antigenic differences in NS1 from each DENV serotype. Additionally, we also sought to isolate a pairing antibody that recognises NS1 from all four DENV serotypes (pan-reactive) for tandem capture of the DENV NS1. To achiev