SARS-CoV-2 Receptor Binding Domain (RBD) Protein–Protein Conjugate Induces Similar or Better Antibody Responses as Spike mRNA in Rhesus Macaques
Puthupparampil V. Scaria, Christopher G. Rowe, Ivan Kosik, Zhe Hu, Jonathan P. Renn, Nada Alani, Pinar Kemanli, Sachy Orr-Gonzalez, Lynn E. Lambert, Kayode Adeyemi, Justin Y. A. Doritchamou, Emma K. Barnafo, Kelly M. Rausch, Liya Muslinkina, Robert D. Morrison, John-Paul Todd
TL;DR
A protein-based SARS-CoV-2 vaccine using RBD conjugated to a carrier protein induced antibody responses similar to or better than an mRNA vaccine in rhesus macaques.
Contribution
Demonstrates that RBD-EcoCRM conjugate vaccine is a viable alternative to mRNA vaccines in non-human primates.
Findings
RBD conjugate induced similar or better antibody and neutralization responses compared to mRNA vaccine.
Both vaccines showed similar IgG subclass profiles and antibody avidity over nine months.
RBD-EcoCRM conjugate showed strong activity against different SARS-CoV-2 variants.
Abstract
Background/Objectives: Rapid development of vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 was pivotal to controlling the COVID-19 pandemic. The emergency also provided a rare opportunity to test novel vaccine platforms such as mRNA in large clinical trials. Most of the early vaccines used SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein as the target antigen. Nevertheless, subsequent studies have shown that Receptor Binding Domain (RBD) of Spike also can yield efficacious vaccines, and we previously demonstrated that chemical conjugation of RBD to a carrier protein, EcoCRM®, enhanced antibody responses and induced strong virus neutralization activity in mice. Methods: Here, we compared the immunogenicity of this conjugate to that of an approved mRNA vaccine from Pfizer/BioNTech in rhesus macaques over a period of nine months. Results: AS01-adjuvanted RBD conjugate induced a similar or better antibody response, receptor binding…
Genes, proteins, chemicals, diseases, species, mutations and cell lines named across the full text — each resolved to its canonical identifier and authoritative record.
Click any figure to enlarge with its caption.
Figure 1
Figure 2
Figure 3
Figure 4
Figure 5
Figure 6
Figure 7
Figure 8Peer Reviews
No public reviews on file for this paper yet. If you reviewed it on a platform where reviews are public (OpenReview, ICLR, NeurIPS, ICML), you can paste yours below so the community can read it here.
Videos
No videos yet. Explain this paper in a talk, walkthrough, or lecture? Add one.
Taxonomy
TopicsSARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 Research · Animal Virus Infections Studies · Immunotherapy and Immune Responses