Evaluation of the growth of different variants of SARS-CoV-2 in permissive cells: Vero CCL-81 and A549

• Grant number: 23/03792-7
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: June 01, 2023
• End date: May 31, 2024
• Field of knowledge: Biological Sciences - Microbiology - Biology and Physiology of Microorganisms
• Principal Investigator: Luiz Mário Ramos Janini
• Grantee: Willian Liang
• Host Institution: Escola Paulista de Medicina (EPM). Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP). Campus São Paulo. São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 20/08943-5 - Investigation of the hosts' induced elements in response to the immunisation with ChAdOx1 nCOV-19 vaccine in a Phase III Clinical Trial, AP.TEM

Abstract

At the end of 2019, cases of pneumonia of unknown origin were identified, which were later attributed to the etiological agent SARS-CoV-2, a respiratory virus belonging to the Betacoronavirus genus, of zoonotic origin. The high number of cases and rapid global spread led the WHO to declare a global pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2 in 2020. The spread of the virus in different human populations and contact with different evolutionary pressures allowed the selection of variants of concern capable of evading, with varying degrees of efficiency, immune responses developed after vaccination with technologies developed against the wild virus. Thus, it is necessary to study the behavior of such variants in cells originating from different tissues. This project aims to evaluate the infectivity and replication capacity of different variants of SARS-CoV-2 in permissive cells, in order to correlate these data with infection patterns, seeking to understand how they behave.