A dysregulated innate immune response and exuberant cytokine/chemokine expression are believed to be critical factors in the pathogenesis of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), caused by a coronavirus (SARS-CoV). However, we recently showed that inefficient immune activation and a poor virus-specific T cell response underlie severe disease in SARS-CoV-infected mice. Here, we extend these ...

A secreted, glycosylated polypeptide containing amino acids 14 to 762 of the SARS coronavirus (SARS-CoV) spike protein and a polyhistidine tag was expressed in recombinant baculovirus-infected insect cells. Mice received the affinity-purified protein with either a saponin (QS21) or a Ribi (MPL + TDM) adjuvant subcutaneously and were challenged intranasally with SARS-CoV. Both regimens induced b...

The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) caused a worldwide epidemic in late 2002/early 2003 and a second outbreak in the winter of 2003/2004 by an independent animal-to-human transmission. The GD03 strain, which was isolated from an index patient of the second outbreak, was reported to resist neutralization by the human monoclonal antibodies (hmAbs) 80R and S3.1, which can ...

An immune antibody phage-display library was constructed from B cells of SARS convalescent patients. More than 80 clones were selected from the library by using the whole inactivated SARS-CoV virions as target. One human scFv, B1, was characterized extensively. The B1 recognized SARS pseudovirus in vivo and competed with SARS sera for binding to SARS-CoV with high affinity (equilibrium dissocia...

Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) is characterized by pulmonary compromise; however, patients often have evidence of other organ dysfunction that may reflect extrapulmonary dissemination of SARS coronavirus (SARS-CoV). We report on the distribution and viral load of SARS-CoV in multiple organ samples from patients who died of SARS during the Toronto outbreak. SARS-CoV was detected in lun...

To confirm an infection with the new coronavirus (SARS-CoV) causing the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) diagnostic assays for detection of SARS-CoV specific antibody are necessary. To evaluate the diagnostic performance of laboratories an external quality assurance (EQA) study was performed in 2004. Participating laboratories (9/20) correctly detected anti-SARS antibodies in serum samp...

BACKGROUND The availability of an early diagnostic tool for severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) would have major public health implications. We investigated whether the SARS coronavirus (SARS-CoV) can be detected in serum and plasma samples during the early stages of SARS and studied the potential prognostic implications of such an approach. METHODS We developed two real-time quantitativ...

1. Human lymphocytes and monocytes are not permissive to productive SARS coronavirus (SARS-CoV) infection in vitro. 2. Challenge of lymphocytes and monocytes with infectious SARS-CoV, inactivated virions, and receptor-binding fragment of spike protein does not trigger apoptosis. 3. Direct infection/interaction between viruses and lymphocytes/monocytes is unlikely to be the cause of lymphopaenia...

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) is the etiological agent of SARS, an emerging disease characterized by atypical pneumonia. Using a yeast two-hybrid screen with the nucleocapsid (N) protein of SARS-CoV as a bait, the C terminus (amino acids 251 to 422) of the N protein was found to interact with human elongation factor 1-alpha (EF1alpha), an essential component of the tr...

The primary targets for SARS-CoV infection are the epithelial cells in the respiratory and intestinal tract. The angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE-2) has been identified as a functional receptor for SARS-CoV. ACE-2 has been shown to be expressed at the apical domain of polarized Calu-3 cells. In this report, interferon alfacon 1 was examined for inhibitory activities against SARS-CoV on huma...