Horizontal and Collaborative against the clock work in pandemic: Production, characterization and distribution of a low-cost SARS-CoV-2 antigen by the Argentinian AntiCovid Consortium

Abstract

December 19th 2019, an epidemiological alert came from China to the whole world: A new virus causing Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome may be evolving. On January 10th the world got to know the genome of the SARS CoV2. Shortly after the installed quarantine period in Argentina, a group of researchers from different institutions and with diverse relevant expertise began a collaborative work to contribute in the development of local accessible high-quality molecular tools against SARS-CoV-2. Our work was mainly aimed at producing the Receptor Binding Domain (RBD) of the SARSCoV-2 Spike protein at low cost. In this work, we produced RBD from SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein in both the well-established HEK-293T mammalian cells system and also in the yeast Pichia pastoris.