scholarly journals A Combination Adjuvant for the Induction of Potent Antiviral Immune Responses for a Recombinant SARS-CoV-2 Protein Vaccine

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sonia Jangra ◽  
Jeffrey J. Landers ◽  
Raveen Rathnasinghe ◽  
Jessica J. O’Konek ◽  
Katarzyna W. Janczak ◽  
...  

Several SARS-CoV-2 vaccines have received EUAs, but many issues remain unresolved, including duration of conferred immunity and breadth of cross-protection. Adjuvants that enhance and shape adaptive immune responses that confer broad protection against SARS-CoV-2 variants will be pivotal for long-term protection as drift variants continue to emerge. We developed an intranasal, rationally designed adjuvant integrating a nanoemulsion (NE) that activates TLRs and NLRP3 with an RNA agonist of RIG-I (IVT DI). The combination adjuvant with spike protein antigen elicited robust responses to SARS-CoV-2 in mice, with markedly enhanced TH1-biased cellular responses and high virus-neutralizing antibody titers towards both homologous SARS-CoV-2 and a variant harboring the N501Y mutation shared by B1.1.7, B.1.351 and P.1 variants. Furthermore, passive transfer of vaccination-induced antibodies protected naive mice against heterologous viral challenge. NE/IVT DI enables mucosal vaccination, and has the potential to improve the immune profile of a variety of SARS-CoV-2 vaccine candidates to provide effective cross-protection against future drift variants.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sonia Jangra ◽  
Jeffrey J. Landers ◽  
Raveen Rathnasinghe ◽  
Jessica J. O’Konek ◽  
Katarzyna W. Janczak ◽  
...  

AbstractSeveral promising vaccines for SARS-CoV-2 have received emergency use authorization in various countries and are being administered to the general population. However, many issues associated with the vaccines and the protection they provide remain unresolved, including the duration of conferred immunity, whether or not sterilizing immunity is imparted, and the degree of cross-variant protection that is achieved with these vaccines. Early evidence has suggested potentially reduced vaccine efficacy towards certain viral variants in circulation. Development of adjuvants compatible with these vaccine platforms that enhance the immune response and guide the adaptive and cellular immune responses towards the types of responses most effective for broad protection against SARS-CoV-2 will likely be pivotal for complete protection. Natural viral infection stimulates strong immune responses through the activation of three main pathways involving Toll-, RIG-I-, and NOD-like receptors (TLRs, RLRs, NLRs). As induction of appropriate innate responses is crucial for long-lasting adaptive immunity and for shaping the correct types of immune responses, we developed a combination, intranasal, adjuvant integrating a nanoemulsion-based adjuvant (NE) that activates TLRs and NLRP3 with an RNA agonist of RIG-I (IVT DI). This rationally designed combination adjuvant yielded a synergistic immune response with highly robust humoral and cellular responses towards SARS-CoV-2 using a recombinant spike protein S1 subunit antigen. Significantly enhanced virus neutralizing antibody titers were achieved towards both a homologous SARS-CoV-2 virus (IC50 titers of 1:104) and a mouse-adapted variant containing the N501Y mutation present in the B1.1.7 UK and B.1.351 South Africa variants. Importantly, NE/IVT DI dramatically enhanced the TH1-biased cellular response, which is expected to provide more durable and tailored cellular immunity while avoiding potential vaccine enhanced pathology previously associated with TH2-biased responses in some SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV vaccines. Our previous work with the NE/IVT DI adjuvant has demonstrated its compatibility with a broad range of antigen types. Thus, this combined adjuvant approach has strong potential for improving the induced immune profile for a variety of SARS-CoV-2 vaccine candidates such that better protection against future drift variants and prevention of transmission can be achieved.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (564) ◽  
pp. eabd5487 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carl A. Pierce ◽  
Paula Preston-Hurlburt ◽  
Yile Dai ◽  
Clare Burn Aschner ◽  
Natalia Cheshenko ◽  
...  

Children and youth infected with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) have milder disease than do adults, and even among those with the recently described multisystem inflammatory syndrome, mortality is rare. The reasons for the differences in clinical manifestations are unknown but suggest that age-dependent factors may modulate the antiviral immune response. We compared cytokine, humoral, and cellular immune responses in pediatric (children and youth, age <24 years) (n = 65) and adult (n = 60) patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) at a metropolitan hospital system in New York City. The pediatric patients had a shorter length of stay, decreased requirement for mechanical ventilation, and lower mortality compared to adults. The serum concentrations of interleukin-17A (IL-17A) and interferon-γ (IFN-γ), but not tumor necrosis factor–α (TNF-α) or IL-6, were inversely related to age. Adults mounted a more robust T cell response to the viral spike protein compared to pediatric patients as evidenced by increased expression of CD25+ on CD4+ T cells and the frequency of IFN-γ+ CD4+ T cells. Moreover, serum neutralizing antibody titers and antibody-dependent cellular phagocytosis were higher in adults compared to pediatric patients with COVID-19. The neutralizing antibody titer correlated positively with age and negatively with IL-17A and IFN-γ serum concentrations. There were no differences in anti-spike protein antibody titers to other human coronaviruses. Together, these findings demonstrate that the poor outcome in hospitalized adults with COVID-19 compared to children may not be attributable to a failure to generate adaptive immune responses.


Pathogens ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (12) ◽  
pp. 1027
Author(s):  
Nima Taefehshokr ◽  
Sina Taefehshokr ◽  
Bryan Heit

The current coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, a disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome corona virus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), was first identified in December 2019 in China, and has led to thousands of mortalities globally each day. While the innate immune response serves as the first line of defense, viral clearance requires activation of adaptive immunity, which employs B and T cells to provide sanitizing immunity. SARS-CoV-2 has a potent arsenal of mechanisms used to counter this adaptive immune response through processes, such as T cells depletion and T cell exhaustion. These phenomena are most often observed in severe SARS-CoV-2 patients, pointing towards a link between T cell function and disease severity. Moreover, neutralizing antibody titers and memory B cell responses may be short lived in many SARS-CoV-2 patients, potentially exposing these patients to re-infection. In this review, we discuss our current understanding of B and T cells immune responses and activity in SARS-CoV-2 pathogenesis.


2009 ◽  
Vol 16 (8) ◽  
pp. 1105-1112 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Kennedy ◽  
V. Shane Pankratz ◽  
Eric Swanson ◽  
David Watson ◽  
Hana Golding ◽  
...  

ABSTRACT Because of the bioterrorism threat posed by agents such as variola virus, considerable time, resources, and effort have been devoted to biodefense preparation. One avenue of this research has been the development of rapid, sensitive, high-throughput assays to validate immune responses to poxviruses. Here we describe the adaptation of a β-galactosidase reporter-based vaccinia virus neutralization assay to large-scale use in a study that included over 1,000 subjects. We also describe the statistical methods involved in analyzing the large quantity of data generated. The assay and its associated methods should prove useful tools in monitoring immune responses to next-generation smallpox vaccines, studying poxvirus immunity, and evaluating therapeutic agents such as vaccinia virus immune globulin.


1996 ◽  
Vol 58 (9) ◽  
pp. 925-927 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yasuo INOSHIMA ◽  
Yasuhiro IKEDA ◽  
Mariko KOHMOTO ◽  
Marcelo Ricardo PECORARO ◽  
Masayuki SHIMOJIMA ◽  
...  

mSphere ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rianna Vandergaast ◽  
Timothy Carey ◽  
Samantha Reiter ◽  
Chase Lathrum ◽  
Patrycja Lech ◽  
...  

Since its emergence at the end of 2019, SARS-CoV-2, the causative agent of COVID-19, has caused over 100 million infections and 2.4 million deaths worldwide. Recently, countries have begun administering approved COVID-19 vaccines, which elicit strong immune responses and prevent disease in most vaccinated individuals.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Annika Fendler ◽  
Lewis Au ◽  
Scott Shepherd ◽  
Fiona Byrne ◽  
Maddalena Cerrone ◽  
...  

Abstract Patients with cancer have higher COVID-19 morbidity and mortality. Here we present the prospective CAPTURE study (NCT03226886) integrating longitudinal immune profiling with clinical annotation. Of 357 patients with cancer, 118 were SARS-CoV-2-positive, 94 were symptomatic and 2 patients died of COVID-19. In this cohort, 83% patients had S1-reactive antibodies, 82% had neutralizing antibodies against WT, whereas neutralizing antibody titers (NAbT) against the Alpha, Beta, and Delta variants were substantially reduced. Whereas S1-reactive antibody levels decreased in 13% of patients, NAbT remained stable up to 329 days. Patients also had detectable SARS-CoV-2-specific T cells and CD4+ responses correlating with S1-reactive antibody levels, although patients with hematological malignancies had impaired immune responses that were disease and treatment-specific, but presented compensatory cellular responses, further supported by clinical. Overall, these findings advance the understanding of the nature and duration of immune response to SARS-CoV-2 in patients with cancer.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuan Liu ◽  
Lianpan Dai ◽  
Xiaoli Feng ◽  
Ran Gao ◽  
Nan Zhang ◽  
...  

AbstractIn the face of the emerging variants of SARS-CoV-2, there is an urgent need to develop a vaccine that can induce fast, effective, long-lasting and broad protective immunity against SARS-CoV-2. Here, we developed a trimeric SARS-CoV-2 S protein vaccine candidate adjuvanted by PIKA, which can induce robust cellular and humoral immune responses. The results showed a high level of neutralizing antibodies induced by the vaccine was maintained for at least 400 days. In the study of non-human primates, PIKA adjuvanted S-trimer induced high SARS-CoV-2 neutralization titers and protected from virus replication in the lung following SARS-CoV-2 challenge. In addition, the long-term neutralizing antibody response induced by S-trimer vaccine adjuvanted by PIKA could neutralize multiple SARS-CoV-2 variants and there is no obvious different among the SARS- CoV-2 variants of interest or concern, including B.1.351, B.1.1.7, P.1, B.1.617.1 and B.1.617.2 variants. These data support the utility of S-trimer protein adjuvanted by PIKA as a potential vaccine candidate against SARS-CoV-2 infection.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ademola Samuel Ojo ◽  
Paul Toluwatope Okediji ◽  
Ayotemide P. Akin-Onitolo ◽  
Olusegun S. Ojo ◽  
Oluyinka Oladele Opaleye

This paper attempts to answer the question: are recovered COVID-19 patients protected from re-infection? This review draws evidence from comparisons between immune responses to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV), which are phylogenetically closely related to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus type 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Relevant studies were identified and reviewed based on searches conducted using PubMed. Full-text original studies on short- and long-term immune responses to human coronaviruses were included. The immune dysfunction and clinical manifestations in SARS-CoV-2, SARS-CoV, and MERS-CoV were found to be similar. Infections with SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV trigger the production of antibodies and memory B- and T-cells. Serum IgM is detectable within 7 days, peak at 21-30 days and become undetectable by 180 days. IgG is detectable at 7 days, peak at 90 days, and decline to undetected levels by 2 years post-infection. Memory B- and T-cells persist in the body for up to 2 and 6 years respectively after initial infection. The short-term risk of SARS-CoV-2 re-infection is predictably low based on similarities in the short term adaptive immune response to kindred coronaviruses. However, more research will be required to determine the long-term adaptive immunity to SARS-CoV-2 and factors that may influence the existence of short- and long-term immunity against the virus.


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