Neutralizing antibody-independent immunity to SARS-CoV-2 in hamsters and hACE-2 transgenic mice immunized with a RBD/Nucleocapsid fusion protein [preprint]
UMass Chan Affiliations
Department of Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases and ImmunologyDocument Type
PreprintPublication Date
2021-09-16Keywords
spike proteinsCOVID-19
chimeric protein
SpiN
SARS-CoV-2
immunity
vaccines
Amino Acids, Peptides, and Proteins
Immunology of Infectious Disease
Immunoprophylaxis and Therapy
Immunotherapy
Infectious Disease
Virus Diseases
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
The nucleocapsid (N) and the receptor binding domain (RBD) of the Spike (S) proteins elicit robust antibody and T cell responses either in vaccinated or COVID-19 convalescent individuals. We generated a chimeric protein that comprises the sequences of RBD from S and N antigens (SpiN). SpiN was highly immunogenic and elicited a strong IFNγ response from T cells and high levels of antibodies to the inactivated virus, but no neutralizing antibodies. Importantly, hamsters and the human Angiotensin Convertase Enzyme-2-transgenic mice immunized with SpiN were highly resistant to challenge with the wild type SARS-CoV-2, as indicated by viral load, clinical outcome, lung inflammation and lethality. Thus, the N protein should be considered to induce T-cell-based immunity to improve SARS-CoV-2 vaccines, and eventually to circumvent the immune scape by variants.Source
bioRxiv 2021.09.16.460663; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.09.16.460663. Link to preprint on bioRxiv.
DOI
10.1101/2021.09.16.460663Permanent Link to this Item
http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14038/29899Notes
This article is a preprint. Preprints are preliminary reports of work that have not been certified by peer review.
Full author list omitted for brevity. For the full list of authors, see article.
Rights
The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license.Distribution License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1101/2021.09.16.460663
Scopus Count
Collections
Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license.