A single-dose of intranasal vaccination with a live-attenuated SARS-CoV-2 vaccine candidate promotes protective mucosal and systemic immunity
Awadalkareem Adam, Birte Kalveram, John Yun-Chung Chen, Jason Yeung, Leslie Rodriguez, Ankita Singh, Pei‐Yong Shi, Xuping Xie, Tian Wang
Abstract
An attenuated SARS-CoV-2 virus with modified viral transcriptional regulatory sequences and deletion of open-reading frames 3, 6, 7 and 8 (∆3678) was previously reported to protect hamsters from SARS-CoV-2 infection and transmission. Here we report that a single-dose intranasal vaccination of ∆3678 protects K18-hACE2 mice from wild-type or variant SARS-CoV-2 challenge. Compared with wild-type virus infection, the ∆3678 vaccination induces equivalent or higher levels of lung and systemic T cell, B cell, IgA, and IgG responses. The results suggest ∆3678 as an attractive mucosal vaccine candidate to boost pulmonary immunity against SARS-CoV-2.