SARS-CoV-2 susceptibility of cell lines and substrates commonly used in diagnosis and isolation of influenza and other viruses

Abstract

Coinfection with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and other viruses is inevitable as the COVID-19 pandemic continues. This study aimed to evaluate cell lines commonly used in virus diagnosis and isolation for their susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2. While multiple kidney cell lines from monkeys were susceptible and permissive to SARS-CoV-2, many cell types derived from human, dog, mink, cat, mouse, or chicken were not. Analysis of MDCK cells, which are most commonly used for surveillance and study of influenza viruses, demonstrated that they were insusceptible to SARS-CoV-2 and that the cellular barrier to productive infection was due to low expression level of the angiotensin converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptor and lower receptor affinity to SARS-CoV-2 spike, which could be overcome by over-expression of canine ACE2 in trans. Moreover, SARS-CoV-2 cell tropism did not appear to be affected by a D614G mutation in the spike protein.

SARS-CoV-2-induced disruption of a vascular bed in a microphysiological system caused by type-I interferon from bronchial organoids

“…Cell lines such as Vero E6 or A549, which derived from cancer cells, are most widely used. 17,18 However, these cell lines largely differ from in vivo condition, especially in susceptibility to virus and immune response against infection. Recently, primary and stem-cell-derived cells are also used as more physiologically relevant cell source.…”

The effects of SARS-CoV-2 on susceptible human cells

“…COVID-19 is known to be a complex disease with clinical responses ranging from asymptomatic to severe with catastrophic respiratory failure and death. The broad tissue tropism of the virus can be confirmed by looking at other susceptible cell types as well as different animal cell lines (Ogando et al, 2020;Wang et al, 2021) as well as human cell lines (colon cancer cell lines CL-14 and CL-40, breast cancer cell line CAL-51), and CACO-2, CALU-3) (Pommerenke et al, 2021). ACE2 (angiotensin-converting enzyme 2) and TMPRSS2 (serine transmembrane protease 2) expression has been found to be indicative but insufficient for productive SARS-CoV-2 infection in human cell lines (Qi et al, 2020;Pommerenke et al, 2021), probably due in part to a shortened splice variant of ACE2 and variants of TMPRSS2.…”