Development of an Antigen Capture Immunoassay Based on Monoclonal Antibodies Specific for Dengue Virus Serotype 2 Nonstructural Protein 1 for Early and Rapid Identification of Dengue Virus Serotype 2 Infections

The dengue virus (DENV) has four distinct serotypes (DENV1, DENV2, DENV3, and DENV4) that require differentiation for effective prevention of morbid diseases. The recently developed DENV1-specific NS1 antigen capture enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) based on the monoclonal antibodies (MAbs) that recognize distinct epitopes on nonstructural protein 1 (NS1) of a specific DENV serotype is convenient and cost-effective, but assays have not yet been developed for DENV serotypes 2 to 4. This paper describes the development and validation of a DENV2-specific NS1 antigen capture ELISA by selection and optimization of the pair of well-characterized MAbs that recognized epitopes specific for DENV2 NS1 from a large panel of MAbs. The DENV2 NS1 ELISA displayed exclusive sensitivity with the DENV2 serotype and did not cross-react with the other three DENV serotypes. The sensitivity and specificity of the DENV2 NS1 ELISA were 83.3% (25/30) and 100% (504/504) when used to test 30 acute-phase serum samples from patients infected with DENV2 identified by virus isolation or reverse transcription-PCR serotyping and 504 serum samples from healthy individuals, respectively. The specificity of this assay was also evaluated using a panel of serum samples which were positive for DENV1, other flaviviruses, and nonflaviviruses; no cross-reactions were observed in these clinical samples. The DENV2 NS1 ELISA was eightfold more sensitive than a commercially available serotype-cross-reactive NS1 ELISA (Panbio Diagnostics, Brisbane, Australia) when the two assays were used to test the DENV2-infected cell culture supernatants in parallel. The Panbio NS1 ELISA displayed variation in sensitivity between DENV serotypes. The DENV2-specific NS1 antigen capture ELISA can be used as a tool for the rapid identification of DENV2 infections.