Trivalent NDV-HXP-S Vaccine Protects against Phylogenetically Distant SARS-CoV-2 Variants of Concern in Mice
Irene González‐Domínguez, José Luis Martínez, Stefan Slamanig, Nicholas Lemus, Yonghong Liu, Tsoi Ying Lai, Juan Manuel Carreño, Gagandeep Singh, Gagandeep Singh, Michael Schotsaert, Ignacio Mena, Stephen McCroskery, Lynda Coughlan, Florian Krammer, Adolfo García‐Sastre, Peter Palese, Weina Sun
Abstract
This manuscript describes an extended work on the Newcastle disease virus (NDV)-based vaccine focusing on multivalent formulations of NDV vectors expressing different prefusion-stabilized versions of the spike proteins of different SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern (VOC). We demonstrate here that this low-cost NDV platform can be easily adapted to construct vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 variants. Importantly, we show that the trivalent preparation, composed of the ancestral Wuhan, Beta, and Delta vaccines, substantially increases the levels of protection and of cross-neutralizing antibodies against mismatched, phylogenetically distant variants, including the currently circulating Omicron variant. We believe that these findings will help to guide efforts for pandemic preparedness against new variants in the future.