RT Journal Article SR Electronic T1 A replication-competent vesicular stomatitis virus for studies of SARS-CoV-2 spike-mediated cell entry and its inhibition JF bioRxiv FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory SP 2020.05.20.105247 DO 10.1101/2020.05.20.105247 A1 M. Eugenia Dieterle A1 Denise Haslwanter A1 Robert H. Bortz III A1 Ariel S. Wirchnianski A1 Gorka Lasso A1 Olivia Vergnolle A1 Shawn A. Abbasi A1 J. Maximilian Fels A1 Ethan Laudermilch A1 Catalina Florez A1 Amanda Mengotto A1 Duncan Kimmel A1 Ryan J. Malonis A1 George Georgiev A1 Jose Quiroz A1 Jason Barnhill A1 Liise-anne Pirofski A1 Johanna P. Daily A1 John M. Dye A1 Jonathan R. Lai A1 Andrew S. Herbert A1 Kartik Chandran A1 Rohit K. Jangra YR 2020 UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/05/20/2020.05.20.105247.abstract AB There is an urgent need for vaccines and therapeutics to prevent and treat COVID-19. Rapid SARS-CoV-2 countermeasure development is contingent on the availability of robust, scalable, and readily deployable surrogate viral assays to screen antiviral humoral responses, and define correlates of immune protection, and to down-select candidate antivirals. Here, we describe a highly infectious recombinant vesicular stomatitis virus bearing the SARS-CoV-2 spike glycoprotein S as its sole entry glycoprotein that closely resembles the authentic agent in its entry-related properties. We show that the neutralizing activities of a large panel of COVID-19 convalescent sera can be assessed in high-throughput fluorescent reporter assay with rVSV-SARS-CoV-2 S and that neutralization of the rVSV and authentic SARS-CoV-2 by spike-specific antibodies in these antisera is highly correlated. Our findings underscore the utility of rVSV-SARS-CoV-2 S for the development of spike-specific vaccines and therapeutics and for mechanistic studies of viral entry and its inhibition.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.