In silico design and validation of commercial kit GPS™ CoVID-19 dtec-RT-qPCR Test under criteria of UNE/EN ISO 17025:2005 and ISO/IEC 15189:2012

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Abstract

Background

The Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), has become a serious infectious disease affecting human health worldwide and rapidly declared a pandemic by WHO. Early, several RT-qPCR were designed by using only the first SARS-CoV-2 genome sequence.

Objectives

A few days later, when additional SARS-CoV-2 genome were retrieved, the kit GPS™ CoVID-19 dtec-RT-qPCR Test was designed to provide a highly specific detection method and commercially available worldwide. The kit was validated following criteria recommended by the UNE/EN ISO 17025:2005 and ISO/IEC 15189:2012.

Methods

The present study approached the in silico specificity of the GPS™ CoVID-19 dtec-RT-qPCR Test and RT-qPCR designs currently published. The empirical validation parameters specificity (inclusivity/exclusivity), quantitative phase analysis (10-10 6 copies), reliability (repeatability/reproducibility) and sensitivity (detection/quantification limits) were evaluated for a minimum of 10-15 assays. Diagnostic validation was achieved by two independent reference laboratories, the Instituto de Salud Carlos III (ISCIII), (Madrid, Spain) and the Public Health England (PHE; Colindale, London, UK).

Results

The GPS™ RT-qPCR primers and probe showed the highest number of mismatches with the closet related non-SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, including some indels. The kits passed all parameters of validation with strict acceptance criteria. Results from reference laboratories 100% correlated with these obtained by suing reference methods and received an evaluation with 100% of diagnostic sensitivity and specificity.

Conclusions

The GPS™ CoVID-19 dtec-RT-qPCR Test, available with full analytical and diagnostic validation, represents a case of efficient transfer of technology being successfully used since the pandemic was declared. The analysis suggested the GPS™ CoVID-19 dtec-RT-qPCR Test is the more exclusive by far.

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  1. SciScore for 10.1101/2020.04.27.065383: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board Statementnot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    GENOME SEQUENCES ALIGNMENT AND PHYLOGENETIC ANALYSIS: Partial alignments of ten SARS-CoV-2 genomic sequences and these from strains of Bat-CoV, Bat SARS-like-CoV, SARS-CoV, Pangolin-CoV (ca. 18,141 bp) and the corresponding phylogenetic tree (Figure 1) was obtained by Neighbour joining method [20], with bootstrap values for 1000 replicates, using the MEGA 5.2.2 software [21]. 2.2.
    MEGA
    suggested: (Mega BLAST, RRID:SCR_011920)
    IN SILICO COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF PRIMERS/PROBES SPECIFICITY: The primers and probes of GPS™ COVID-19 dtec-RT-qPCR Test and the RT-qPCR designs recently published [12–19] were aligned to the corresponding homologous regions of 63 SARS-CoV-2 strains and closely related Betacoronavirus using the Basic Local Alignment Search Tool (BLAST) software available on the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI, https://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Blast.cgi) website databases (Bethesda, MD, USA).
    BLAST
    suggested: (BLASTX, RRID:SCR_001653)
    https://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Blast.cgi
    suggested: (TBLASTX, RRID:SCR_011823)

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).


    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.


    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.


    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.


    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No funding statement was detected.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.