RBD-VLP Vaccines Adjuvanted with Alum or SWE Protect K18-hACE2 Mice against SARS-CoV-2 VOC Challenge
Ting Y. Wong, Brynnan P. Russ, Katherine S. Lee, Olivia A. Miller, Jason Kang, Melissa Cooper, Michael T. Winters, Sergio A. Rodriguez‐Aponte, Neil C. Dalvie, Ryan S. Johnston, Nathaniel A. Rader, Zeriel Y. Wong, Holly A. Cyphert, Iván Martínez, Umesh Shaligram, Saurabh Batwal, Rakesh R. Lothe, Rahul Chandrasekaran, Gaurav Nagar, Meghraj P. Rajurkar, Harish Rao, Justin R. Bevere, Mariette Barbier, J. Christopher Love, F. Heath Damron
Abstract
Global COVID-19 vaccine distribution to low-income countries has been a major challenge of the pandemic. To address supply chain issues, RBD virus-like particle (VLP) vaccines that are cost-effective and capable of large-scale production were developed and evaluated for efficacy in preclinical mouse studies. We demonstrated that RBD-VLP vaccines protected K18-hACE2 mice against Alpha or Beta challenge similarly to Pfizer mRNA vaccination. Our findings showed that the VLP platform can be utilized to formulate immunogenic and efficacious COVID-19 vaccines.