Evaluation of high-throughput sequencing for replacing the conventional adventitious virus detection assays used for biologics

evaluation-of-high-throughput-sequencing-for-replacing-the-conventional-adventitious-virus-detection-assays-used-for-biologics
Evaluation of high-throughput sequencing for replacing the conventional adventitious virus detection assays used for biologics

Data availability

The HTS raw data are available from NCBI BioProject PRJNA1026487 (publicly available).

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Acknowledgements

We thank Antonio Lembo for providing bioinformatics support and Alessia Bachmann for early involvement in the study at EMD Serono; Ahae Woo for technical support at MilliporeSigma; Serge Henrion for in vitro technical support and Olivier Vandeputte for sequencing support at GSK; and Jenie Phue for sequencing support in the Facility for Biotechnology Resources at CBER/FDA. This work was performed under a Project Award Agreement from the National Institute for Innovation in Manufacturing Biopharmaceuticals (NIIMBL). This work was supported, in whole or in part, by the Gates Foundation Grant number OPP1204996. The findings and conclusions contained within are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect positions or policies of the Gates Foundation. Under the grant conditions of the foundation, a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License has already been assigned to the Author Accepted Manuscript version that might arise from this submission.

Author information

Author notes

  1. Jen-Hui Tsou

    Present address: Office of the Director, Facility of Biotechnology Resources, CBER USA FDA, Silver Spring, MD, USA

  2. Manuel Noll

    Present address: Integrative Biological Sciences (InBioS) Bât. B22 Integrative Biological Sciences, Liège 1, Belgium

  3. These authors contributed equally: Pei-Ju Chin, Jen-Hui Tsou, Alison Armstrong, Noémie Deneyer, Valeria Zanda.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Viral Products, Office of Vaccines Research and Review, Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Silver Spring, MD, USA

    Pei-Ju Chin, Jen-Hui Tsou, Sandra M. Fuentes & Arifa S. Khan

  2. Millipore Sigma, Rockville, MD, USA

    Alison Armstrong, Nikolay Korokhov, Alfonso Lavorgna, Afshin Sohrabi & Mary Whiteman

  3. GSK, Wavre, Wavre, Belgium

    Noémie Deneyer

  4. EMD Serono RBM S.p.A. Istituto di Ricerche Biomediche A. Marxer, Via Ribes 1 10010 Colleretto Giacosa, Italy, an affiliate of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany

    Valeria Zanda & Simone Olgiati

  5. Akkodis Belgium c/o GSK, Evere, 1140, Belgium

    Sophie Ayama-Canden & Manuel Noll

  6. GSK, Rixensart, Rixensart, Belgium

    Anne-Sophie Colinet, Christophe Lambert & Michel Protz

  7. GSK Marburg, Marburg, Germany

    Shahjahan Shaid

Authors

  1. Pei-Ju Chin
  2. Jen-Hui Tsou
  3. Alison Armstrong
  4. Noémie Deneyer
  5. Valeria Zanda
  6. Sophie Ayama-Canden
  7. Anne-Sophie Colinet
  8. Sandra M. Fuentes
  9. Nikolay Korokhov
  10. Christophe Lambert
  11. Alfonso Lavorgna
  12. Manuel Noll
  13. Simone Olgiati
  14. Michel Protz
  15. Shahjahan Shaid
  16. Afshin Sohrabi
  17. Mary Whiteman
  18. Arifa S. Khan

Contributions

A.S.K. designed and coordinated the study, provided oversight for the data analysis, P-J. C. performed bioinformatics analysis and data interpretation, J-H.T. performed the lab work, S.F. prepared and distributed the test samples and provided support for the lab work; N.D., C.L., M.P. and S.S. were involved in the conception and design of the study. N.D., C.L., A.S.C., and M.P. selected and/or developed methods to carry out the study. M.N., S.A-C. and M.P. acquired the data. M.N., S.A-C., M.P., C.L., A.S.C. and N.D. analyzed and interpreted the results. A.A., A.S., S.O. and V.Z. were involved in the conception and design of the study. A.A., A.L., N.K., S.O., V.Z. and M.W. selected and/or developed methods to carry out the study. A.A., A.L., N.K., S.O., V.Z. and M.W. analyzed and interpreted the results. All authors were involved in drafting the manuscript or revising it critically for important intellectual content. All authors had full access to the data and approved the final manuscript before it was submitted by the corresponding author.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Arifa S. Khan.

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Competing interests

C.L., M.P., A-S.C., S.S. and N.D. are employees of the GSK group of companies and may hold shares in GSK; A.A., A.S., N.K., A.L., and M.W. are employees of the MilliporeSigma organization and may hold shares in MilliporeSigma. V.Z. and S.O. are employees of EMD Serono RBM S.p.A, and affiliate of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, and may hold shared in Merck KGaA. All other authors declare no competing interests.

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Chin, PJ., Tsou, JH., Armstrong, A. et al. Evaluation of high-throughput sequencing for replacing the conventional adventitious virus detection assays used for biologics. npj Vaccines (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41541-025-01351-2

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