Lack of blood samples are hampering antibody tests

A LACK of blood samples from patients who have suffered Covid-19 is hampering efforts to validate antibody tests, experts say.

Public Health England (PHE) currently only has a small number of positive blood samples for screening antibody tests to see whether they work, while the Department of Health is trying to create a blood bank.

Part of the issue, according to PHE, is that it takes time for an immune response to develop and therefore the blood from those who have suffered Covid-19 is only just reaching the maturity needed for use in antibody tests.

But some private labs say their efforts to validate tests that can then be used by frontline staff and the wider public are being hampered by PHE not sharing its blood samples.

Professor Sir John Bell, from Oxford University who is a Government adviser on life sciences, has said the university team has struggled to get samples from PHE.

In private email correspondence, he said the team “could not get” samples from PHE, adding: “We are collecting ours one convalescent patient at a time. Now have 15 soon will have more than 30.”

However, PHE said Oxford University had not been refused support. It suggested Government departments, biotech firms and university research labs are all facing similar problems in sourcing positive blood samples.

Professor Karol Sikora, founder of Rutherford Cancer Centres, said he and a colleague had tried to obtain samples from PHE to validate some tests from South Korea which have the potential for widespread public use.

But he said there had been no response to numerous inquiries.

He told the Press Association news agency: “I have got 1,000 kits arriving from Korea tomorrow.

“We want to test 50 of them in the lab but the bottom line is none of us can do anything until we get samples from people who have recovered from coronavirus.

“But we’ve had no response from PHE, nobody appears to be in charge, they don’t answer the phone, they don’t answer emails.”

Prof Sikora said officials had also failed to communicate with companies on what the exact threshold is for a “good test”.

He also had no faith that the results would be accepted even if a good test was found.

“There are lots of labs in a similar situation, maybe 50 or 100 around the country,” he said.

Sir Paul Nurse, director and chief executive of the Francis Crick Institute – which has been conducting coronavirus tests – agreed it was not easy to get hold of samples. He was asked what the Government could do to make sure samples are getting to companies working to produce tests.

Sir Paul told the Science and Technology Committee yesterday: “There are a lot of rules, a lot of regulations you have to cut your way through – and it is difficult to do.” He added: “You can get through them, but it’s a lot of effort, and my colleagues at the Crick have had to do an enormous amount of work to get the samples in.

In a statement, Dr Yvonne Doyle, medical director at PHE, said: “PHE has only a very small number of positive blood samples.

“It takes time for an immune response to develop; for most people infected in the UK, this will have been in the past six weeks and so their blood is only now reaching maturity to be used in this capacity.

“A blood bank will be developed that companies can use to validate their technology.”

It comes as the Department of Health (DoH) said a new business consortium had been set up to rapidly develop new antibody tests.

Pharmaceutical firms including AstraZeneca and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) will focus on tests to identify whether people currently have the virus (antigen tests).

A new lab set up by AstraZeneca, GSK and Cambridge University will aim to carry out 30,000 tests a day by the start of May.

The Government said the firms are exploring “alternative chemical reagents” for test kits in order to help overcome supply shortages.

On antibody testing, the DoH said a UK Rapid Test Consortium (UK-RTC), including Oxford University, Abingdon Health, BBI Solutions and CIGA Healthcare has launched “in order to design and develop a new antibody test” that is home-grown.

Professor John Newton, the Government’s adviser on testing, who is co-ordinating the programme, said: “We have already launched from scratch an entire new network of testing labs across the UK and, with the support of industry, we can go even further, both in support of our existing work and in developing new tests.”