Development of a high affinity and specific CHIKV-E2 monoclonal antibody for Chikungunya diagnosis

Abstract Chikungunya fever is a vector-borne viral disease transmitted to humans by Chikungunya virus (CHIKV)-infected mosquitoes. There have been many outbreaks of CHIKV infection in world. Local transmission of chikungunya virus was emerged in the America continents at 2013. The virus poses ongoing risks to global health. To control CHIKV infection, it is important to improve the existing CHIKV diagnostic approaches to allow for the detection of low CHIKV quantity and to correctly discriminate CHIKV infections from those due to other mosquito-transmitted viruses, including Zika virus (ZIKV), Japanese encephalitis virus (JEV), and Dengue virus (DENV). Here, we produced monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) against the CHIKV envelope 2 (CHIKV-E2) protein and compared their affinity and specificity with commercially available mAbs using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISA). Two anti-CHIKV-E2 mAbs, 19-1 and 21-1, showed higher binding affinities to CHIKV-E2 protein compared with the commercial mAbs. Especially, the 19-1 mAb had the highest binding affinity to inactivated CHIKV. Moreover, the 19-1 mAb had very little cross-reactivity with other mosquito-borne viruses, such as ZIKV, JEV, and DENV. These results suggest that the newly anti-CHIKV-E2 mAb, 19-1, could be applied for a CHIKV diagnostic approaches.