A Newcastle Disease Virus (NDV) Expressing a Membrane-Anchored Spike as a Cost-Effective Inactivated SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine
Weina Sun, Stephen McCroskery, Wen‐Chun Liu, Sarah R. Leist, Yong-Hong Liu, Randy A. Albrecht, Stefan Slamanig, Justine Oliva, Fatima Amanat, Alexandra Schäfer, Kenneth H. Dinnon, Bruce L. Innis, Adolfo García‐Sastre, Florian Krammer, Ralph S. Baric, Peter Palese
Abstract
A successful severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) vaccine must not only be safe and protective, but must also meet the demand on a global scale at a low cost. Using the current influenza virus vaccine production capacity to manufacture an egg-based inactivated Newcastle disease virus (NDV)/SARS-CoV-2 vaccine would meet that challenge. Here, we report pre-clinical evaluations of an inactivated NDV chimera stably expressing the membrane-anchored form of the spike (NDV-S) as a potent coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccine in mice and hamsters. The inactivated NDV-S vaccine was immunogenic, inducing strong binding and/or neutralizing antibodies in both animal models. More importantly, the inactivated NDV-S vaccine protected animals from SARS-CoV-2 infections. In the presence of an adjuvant, antigen-sparing could be achieved, which would further reduce the cost while maintaining the protective efficacy of the vaccine.