Herd immunity on chip: recapitulating virus transmission in human society

This article has been Reviewed by the following groups

Read the full article See related articles

Discuss this preprint

Start a discussion What are Sciety discussions?

Abstract

Virus transmission is affected by population density, social distancing, and vaccination. This has been simulated only by mathematical models. Here, we report the first experimental model to mimic herd immunity to a human coronavirus using a microfluidic device filled with host cells. The device consists of 444 microchambers filled with susceptible (S 0 ), infected (I 0 ), and unsusceptible (U 0 ) cells at specific ratios. The transmission rate and reproduction numbers were directly proportional to S 0 and I 0 and inversely proportional to U 0 . Herd immunity was achieved when the proportion of U 0 was at 80% in a fixed number of uninfected (S 0 +U 0 ) cells. These results were consistent with those from a mathematical model. The device can be used for predicting virus transmission.

One-Sentence Summary

We present the first experimental model enabling the simulation of herd immunity in a microfluidic device filled with host cells to human coronavirus.

Article activity feed

  1. SciScore for 10.1101/2022.05.27.493795: (What is this?)

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

    Table 1: Rigor

    NIH rigor criteria are not applicable to paper type.

    Table 2: Resources

    Experimental Models: Cell Lines
    SentencesResources
    MRC-5 cells labeled with green fluorescent protein (MRC-5 GFP) were purchased from Lugen Sci Co., Ltd. (Bucheon, Korea).
    MRC-5 GFP
    suggested: None
    MRC-5 cells were maintained in minimum essential media (MEM) (HyClone Laboratories, Logan, UT) supplemented with 10% (v/v
    MRC-5
    suggested: None
    In brief, freshly cultured MRC-5 or Hu7 cells (104 cells per well) were seeded in a 96-well plate (Corning) and incubated at 37 °C under 5% CO2 overnight.
    Hu7
    suggested: None
    To generate unsusceptible cells (U0), MRC-5 or Huh-7 was transfected with either aminopeptidase (APN) small interfering RNA (siRNA) oligonucleotide (sense: 5’-GCA GCA GAU CUG UAU AUU U-3’, antisense: 5’-AAA UAU ACA GAU CUG C-3’) or negative control siRNA from Bioneer Co. (Daejeon, Korea).
    Huh-7
    suggested: CLS Cat# 300156/p7178_HuH7, RRID:CVCL_0336)
    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    Images were processed using Image J (NIH, Bethesda,
    Image J
    suggested: (ImageJ, RRID:SCR_003070)

    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.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.


    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.