Clinical Validation of a Novel T-cell Receptor Sequencing Assay for Identification of Recent or Prior SARS-CoV-2 Infection

Background While diagnostic, therapeutic, and vaccine development in the COVID-19 pandemic has proceeded at unprecedented speed and scale, critical gaps remain in our understanding of the immune response to SARS-CoV-2. Current diagnostic strategies, including serology, have numerous limitations in addressing these gaps. Here we describe clinical performance of T-Detect COVID, the first reported assay to determine recent or prior SARS-CoV-2 infection based on T-cell receptor (TCR) sequencing and immune repertoire profiling from whole blood samples. Methods Methods for high-throughput immunosequencing of the TCR{beta} gene from blood specimens have been described1. We developed a statistical classifier showing high specificity for identifying prior SARS-CoV-2 infection2, utilizing >4,000 SARS-CoV-2-associated TCR sequences from 784 cases and 2,447 controls across 5 independent cohorts. The T-Detect COVID Assay comprises immunosequencing and classifier application to yield a qualitative positive or negative result. Several retrospective and prospective cohorts were enrolled to assess assay performance including primary and secondary Positive Percent Agreement (PPA; N=205, N=77); primary and secondary Negative Percent Agreement (NPA; N=87, N=79); PPA compared to serology (N=55); and pathogen cross-reactivity (N=38). Results T-Detect COVID demonstrated high PPA in subjects with prior PCR-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection (97.1% 15+ days from diagnosis; 94.5% 15+ days from symptom onset), high NPA (~100%) in presumed or confirmed SARS-CoV-2 negative cases, equivalent or higher PPA than two commercial EUA serology tests, and no evidence of pathogen cross-reactivity. Conclusion T-Detect COVID is a novel T-cell immunosequencing assay demonstrating high clinical performance to identify recent or prior SARS-CoV-2 infection from standard blood samples. This assay can provide critical insights on the SARS-CoV-2 immune response, with potential implications for clinical management, risk stratification, surveillance, assessing protective immunity, and understanding long-term sequelae.