Mohsen, Mona O.; Rothen, Dominik; Balke, Ina; Martina, Byron; Zeltina, Vilija; Inchakalody, Varghese; Gharailoo, Zahra; Nasrallah, Gheyath; Dermime, Said; Tars, Kaspars; Vogel, Monique; Zeltins, Andris; Bachmann, Martin F. (2021). Neutralization of MERS coronavirus through a scalable nanoparticle vaccine. NPJ vaccines, 6(1), p. 107. Springer Nature 10.1038/s41541-021-00365-w
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Neutralization_of_MERS_coronavirus_through_a_scalable_nanoparticle_vaccine.pdf - Published Version Available under License Creative Commons: Attribution (CC-BY). Download (1MB) | Preview |
MERS-CoV continues to cause human outbreaks, so far in 27 countries worldwide following the first registered epidemic in Saudi Arabia in 2012. In this study, we produced a nanovaccine based on virus-like particles (VLPs). VLPs are safe vaccine platforms as they lack any replication-competent genetic material, and are used since many years against hepatitis B virus (HBV), hepatitis E virus (HEV) and human papilloma virus (HPV). In order to produce a vaccine that is readily scalable, we genetically fused the receptor-binding motif (RBM) of MERS-CoV spike protein into the surface of cucumber-mosaic virus VLPs. The employed CuMVTT-VLPs represent a new immunologically optimized vaccine platform incorporating a universal T cell epitope derived from tetanus toxin (TT). The resultant vaccine candidate (mCuMVTT-MERS) is a mosaic particle and consists of unmodified wild type monomers and genetically modified monomers displaying RBM, co-assembling within E. coli upon expression. mCuMVTT-MERS vaccine is self-adjuvanted with ssRNA, a TLR7/8 ligand which is spontaneously packaged during the bacterial expression process. The developed vaccine candidate induced high anti-RBD and anti-spike antibodies in a murine model, showing high binding avidity and an ability to completely neutralize MERS-CoV/EMC/2012 isolate, demonstrating the protective potential of the vaccine candidate for dromedaries and humans.
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