Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology

The Korean Society for Microbiology and Biotechnology (한국미생물·생명공학회)
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Expression and Immunogenicity of SARS-CoV-2 Virus-Like Particles based on Recombinant Truncated HEV-3 ORF2 Capsid Protein

  • Zhou, Yong-Fei (National Engineering Laboratory for AIDS Vaccine, School of Life Sciences, Jilin University) ;
  • Nie, Jiao-Jiao (National Engineering Laboratory for AIDS Vaccine, School of Life Sciences, Jilin University) ;
  • Shi, Chao (National Engineering Laboratory for AIDS Vaccine, School of Life Sciences, Jilin University) ;
  • Ning, Ke (National Engineering Laboratory for AIDS Vaccine, School of Life Sciences, Jilin University) ;
  • Cao, Yu-Feng (Immune-Path Biotechnology (Suzhou) Co., Ltd.) ;
  • Xie, Yanbo (Jilin Provincial Key Laboratory of Agricultural Biotechnology, Jilin Academy of Agricultural Sciences) ;
  • Xiang, Hongyu (National Engineering Laboratory for AIDS Vaccine, School of Life Sciences, Jilin University) ;
  • Xie, Qiuhong (National Engineering Laboratory for AIDS Vaccine, School of Life Sciences, Jilin University)
  • Received : 2022.05.17
  • Accepted : 2022.09.16
  • Published : 2022.10.28
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Abstract

COVID-19 is an emerging disease that poses a severe threat to global public health. As such, there is an urgent demand for vaccines against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Here, we describe a virus-like nanoparticle candidate vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 produced by an E. coli expression system. The fusion protein of a truncated ORF2-encoded protein of aa 439~608 (p170) from hepatitis E virus CCJD-517 and the receptor-binding domain of the spike protein from SARS-CoV-2 were expressed, purified and characterized. The antigenicity and immunogenicity of p170-RBD were evaluated in vitro and in Kunming mice. Our investigation revealed that p170-RBD self-assembled into approximately 24 nm virus-like particles, which could bind to serum from vaccinated people (p < 0.001) and receptors on cells. Immunization with p170-RBD induced the titer of IgG antibody vaccine increased from 14 days post-immunization and was significantly enhanced after a booster immunization at 28 dpi, ultimately reaching a peak level on 42 dpi with a titer of 4.97 log10. Pseudovirus neutralization tests showed that the candidate vaccine induced a strong neutralizing antibody response in mice. In this research, we demonstrated that p170-RBD possesses strong antigenicity and immunogenicity and could be a potential candidate for use in future SARS-CoV-2 vaccine development.

Keywords

Acknowledgement

This work was supported by Jilin Province Science and Technology Institute of China (Grant No. 20200708072YY).

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