4.5 g l glucose

Tryptic soy agar (TSA), maximum recovery diluent (MRD), tryptone soya broth (TSB), and plate count agar (PCA) were purchased from VWR (Radnor, PA, USA).
Trypsin-ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (Trypsin-EDTA) 0.25%/1 mM EDTA 4Na in HBSS, w/o:Ca and Mg, w:Phenol red and Dulbecco’s modified Eagle’s medium (DMEM) with 4.5 g/L glucose and 2 mM L-glutamine were purchased from PanBiotech (Aidenbach, Germany). Fetal bovine serum heat inactivated (FBS) was purchased from Biowest (Nuaille, France) and 1% antibiotic-antimycotic solution from Corning (Corning-New York, NY, USA) as well as phosphate-buffered saline (PBS) 10× Molecular Biology Grade. Sodium dodecyl sulfate (CAS No. 151-21-3) was purchased from Merck (Darmstadt, Germany). Triton X-100 (CAS No. 9002-93-1) and Neutral Red (CAS No. 553-24-2) were purchased from Sigma-Aldrich (St. Louis, MO, USA). Lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) cytotoxicity detection kit and water-soluble tetrazolium (WST-1) cell proliferation reagent (CAS No.150849-52-8) were bought from Roche (Basel, Switzerland). CLF was purchased from Respol (Leiria, Portugal).

Pseudotyped lentiviral particles were generated as previously described [23 (link)]. Briefly, human embryonic kidney (HEK) 293T/17 cells were cultured up to 70–90% confluence at 37 °C and 5% v/v CO₂ in DMEM growth media with 4.5 g/L glucose (Pan-Biotech, Aidenbach, Germany) supplemented with 10% FBS (Pan-Biotech) and 1% penicillin/streptomycin (Pan Biotech). In addition, pCAGGS-SARS-CoV-2 spike plasmids (CFAR, Catalog number: 100976), the lentiviral vector expressing firefly luciferase pCSFLW [23 (link)], and the second-generation lentiviral packaging construct p8.91 (expressing gag, pol, and rev) [23 (link)] were utilised to transfect the cells. Supernatants containing the pseudotype viral particles were harvested using a 3 mL sterile syringe and subsequently filtered into Falcon tubes via a syringe-driven 0.45 µm filter. All filtered supernatants were stored at −80 °C.