What is it about?
Zika immunity is difficult to measure with conventional lab tests because of cross reactions with dengue, a closely related but much more common virus infection in the tropics. We synthesized a library of a half million small non-biological small molecules, and pulled out a molecule that reacted only with blood antibodies from persons with prior Zika infections, but not those with prior dengue infections.
Featured Image
Why is it important?
Zika infection during pregnancy can result in major congenital malformations in the developing fetus. Accurate methods to diagnose will lead to improved patient management, as well as better epidemiological tracking of Zika.
Perspectives
The technology is amazing. You don't need to know the sequence, or the structure, or even the nature of the microbe to detect, isolate, and characterize a sensitive and specific biomarker. By comparing small molecule antibody profiles using well characterized sets of patients, you can tease out the molecules that are found only in the patients of interest.
Donald Burke
University of Pittsburgh
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Identification and characterization of a nonbiological small-molecular mimic of a Zika virus conformational neutralizing epitope, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, May 2024, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2312755121.
You can read the full text:
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
