Monitoring Group Activity of Hamsters and Mice as a Novel Tool to Evaluate COVID-19 Progression, Convalescence, and rVSV-ΔG-Spike Vaccination Efficacy

  1. Sharon Melamed
  2. Boaz Politi
  3. Ettie Grauer
  4. Hagit Achdout
  5. Moshe Aftalion
  6. David Gur
  7. Hadas Tamir
  8. Yfat Yahalom-Ronen
  9. Shlomy Maimon
  10. Efi Yitzhak
  11. Shay Weiss
  12. Amir Rosner
  13. Noam Erez
  14. Shmuel Yitzhaki
  15. Shmuel C Shapira
  16. Nir Paran
  17. Emanuelle Mamroud
  18. Yaron Vagima
  19. Tomer Israely

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Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic initiated a worldwide race toward the development of treatments and vaccines. Small animal models included the Syrian golden hamster and the K18-hACE2 mice infected with SARS-CoV-2 to display a disease state with some aspects of human COVID-19. A group activity of animals in their home cage continuously monitored by the HCMS100 (Home cage Monitoring System 100) was used as a sensitive marker of disease, successfully detecting morbidity symptoms of SARS-CoV-2 infection in hamsters and in K18-hACE2 mice. COVID-19 convalescent hamsters rechallenged with SARS-CoV-2 exhibited minor reduction in group activity compared to naive hamsters. To evaluate the rVSV-ΔG-spike vaccination efficacy against SARS-CoV-2, we used the HCMS100 to monitor the group activity of hamsters in their home cage. A single-dose rVSV-ΔG-spike vaccination of the immunized group showed a faster recovery than the nonimmunized infected hamsters, substantiating the efficacy of rVSV-ΔG-spike vaccine. HCMS100 offers nonintrusive, hands-free monitoring of a number of home cages of hamsters or mice modeling COVID-19.

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  1. Version published to 10.3389/fbioe.2021.737627
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    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.06.09.447687: (What is this?)

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

    Table 1: Rigor

    EthicsIACUC: Treatment of animals was in accordance to Animal Welfare Act and the conditions specified in the Guide for Care and Use of Laboratory Animals (National Institute of Health, 2011).
    Sex as a biological variableFemale and male golden Syrian hamsters (60-90 gr.,
    RandomizationHamsters and mice were randomly assigned to experiment and kept in groups of 4 and 5, respectively.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Cell Line Authenticationnot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Experimental Models: Cell Lines
    SentencesResources
    Virus stocks were propagated and tittered on Vero E6 cells.
    Vero E6
    suggested: RRID:CVCL_XD71)
    Experimental Models: Organisms/Strains
    SentencesResources
    K18-hACE2 transgenic mice infection, we used SARS-CoV-2, isolate Human 2019-nCoV ex China strain BavPat1/2020 that was kindly provided by Prof. Dr. Christian Drosten (Charité, Berlin) through the European Virus Archive – Global (EVAg Ref-SKU: 026V-03883)
    K18-hACE2
    suggested: RRID:IMSR_GPT:T037657)
    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    Group differences are analyzed by two ways ANOVA (group × time, with repeated measure on the latter) followed by an appropriate post hoc analysis (Dunnett) using GraphPad 7.
    GraphPad
    suggested: (GraphPad Prism, RRID:SCR_002798)

    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.

    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.

  3. Version published to 10.1101/2021.06.09.447687v1 on bioRxiv