ABSTRACT
The emergence of SARS-CoV-2 (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus-2) variants and "anatomical escape" characteristics threaten the effectiveness of current coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccines. There is an urgent need to understand the immunological mechanism of broad-spectrum respiratory tract protection to guide broader vaccines development. In this study, we investigated immune responses induced by an NS1-deleted influenza virus vectored intranasal COVID-19 vaccine (dNS1-RBD) which provides broad-spectrum protection against SARS-CoV-2 variants. Intranasal delivery of dNS1-RBD induced innate immunity, trained immunity and tissue-resident memory T cells covering the upper and lower respiratory tract. It restrained the inflammatory response by suppressing early phase viral load post SARS-CoV-2 challenge and attenuating pro-inflammatory cytokine (IL-6, IL-1B, and IFN-{gamma}) levels, thereby reducing excess immune-induced tissue injury compared with the control group. By inducing local cellular immunity and trained immunity, intranasal delivery of NS1-deleted influenza virus vectored vaccine represents a broad-spectrum COVID-19 vaccine strategy to reduce disease burden.
ABSTRACT
The widespread SARS-CoV-2 in humans results in the continuous emergence of new variants. Recently emerged Omicron variant with multiple spike mutations sharply increases the risk of breakthrough infection or reinfection, highlighting the urgent need for new vaccines with broad-spectrum antigenic coverage. Using inter-lineage chimera and mutation patch strategies, we engineered a recombinant monomeric spike variant (STFK1628x), which showed high immunogenicity and mutually complementary antigenicity to its prototypic form (STFK). In hamsters, a bivalent vaccine comprised of STFK and STFK1628x elicited high titers of broad-spectrum antibodies to neutralize all 14 circulating SARS-CoV-2 variants, including Omicron; and fully protected vaccinees from intranasal SARS-CoV-2 challenges of either the ancestral strain or immune-evasive Beta variant. Strikingly, the vaccination of hamsters with the bivalent vaccine completely blocked the within-cage virus transmission to unvaccinated sentinels, for either the ancestral SARS-CoV-2 or Beta variant. Thus, our study provides new insights and antigen candidates for developing next-generation COVID-19 vaccines.
ABSTRACT
Vaccination is the most effective and feasible way to contain the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. The rapid development of effective COVID-19 vaccines is an extraordinary achievement. This study reviewed the efficacy/effectiveness, immunogenicity, and safety profile of the 12 most progressed COVID-19 vaccines and discussed the challenges and prospects of the vaccine-based approaches in a global crisis. Overall, most of the current vaccines have shown safety and efficacy/effectiveness during actual clinical trials or in the real-world studies, indicating a development of pandemic control. However, many challenges are faced by pandemic control in terms of maximizing the effect of vaccines, such as rapid vaccine coverage, strategies to address variants with immune escape capability, and surveillance of vaccine safety in the medium- and long-terms.
Subject(s)
Humans , COVID-19/prevention & control , COVID-19 Vaccines/adverse effects , Pandemics/prevention & control , SARS-CoV-2 , VaccinationABSTRACT
Remarkable progress has been made in developing intramuscular vaccines against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2); however, they are limited with respect to eliciting local immunity in the respiratory tract, which is the primary infection site for SARS-CoV-2. To overcome the limitations of intramuscular vaccines, we constructed a nasal vaccine candidate based on an influenza vector by inserting a gene encoding the receptor-binding domain (RBD) of the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2, named CA4-dNS1-nCoV-RBD (dNS1-RBD). A preclinical study showed that in hamsters challenged 1 day and 7 days after single-dose vaccination or 6 months after booster vaccination, dNS1-RBD largely mitigated lung pathology, with no loss of body weight, caused by either the prototype-like strain or beta variant of SARS-CoV-2. Lasted data showed that the animals could be well protected against beta variant challenge 9 months after vaccination. Notably, the weight loss and lung pathological changes of hamsters could still be significantly reduced when the hamster was vaccinated 24 h after challenge. Moreover, such cellular immunity is relatively unimpaired for the most concerning SARS-CoV-2 variants. The protective immune mechanism of dNS1-RBD could be attributed to the innate immune response in the nasal epithelium, local RBD-specific T cell response in the lung, and RBD-specific IgA and IgG response. Thus, this study demonstrates that the intranasally delivered dNS1-RBD vaccine candidate may offer an important addition to fight against the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, compensating limitations of current intramuscular vaccines, particularly at the start of an outbreak.
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The COVID-19 pandemic is a global health disaster. Moreover, emerging mutated virus strains present an even greater challenge for existing vaccines and medications. One possible solution is to design drugs based on the properties of virus epigenome, which are more common among coronaviruses. Here, we reported an FDA-approved drug for myelodysplastic syndrome, azacytidine (5Aza), limited virus infection and protected mice against SARS-CoV-2. We demonstrated that this antiviral effect is related to 5Aza incorporation into viral RNA, which disrupt m5C RNA methylation modification profile. This work suggests that targeting viral epigenomes is a viable therapeutic strategy, potentially opening new pathways for treating COVID-19.
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Although vaccines have been successfully developed and approved against SARS-CoV-2, it is still valuable to perform studies on conserved antigenic sites for preventing possible pandemic-risk of other SARS-like coronavirus in the future and prevalent SARS-CoV-2 variants. By antibodies obtained from convalescent COVID-19 individuals, receptor binding domain (RBD) were identified as immunodominant neutralizing domain that efficiently elicits neutralizing antibody response with on-going affinity mature. Moreover, we succeeded to define a quantitative antigenic map of neutralizing sites within SARS-CoV-2 RBD, and found that sites S2, S3 and S4 (new-found site) are conserved sites and determined as subimmunodominant sites, putatively due to their less accessibility than SARS-CoV-2 unique sites. P10-6G3, P07-4D10 and P05-6H7, respectively targeting S2, S3 and S4, are relatively rare antibodies that also potently neutralizes SARS-CoV, and the last mAbs performing neutralization without blocking S protein binding to receptor. Further, we have tried to design some RBDs to improve the immunogenicity of conserved sites. Our studies, focusing on conserved antigenic sites of SARS-CoV-2 and SARS-CoV, provide insights for promoting development of universal SARS-like coronavirus vaccines therefore enhancing our pandemic preparedness.
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Chronic hepatitis B (CHB) is often treated with drugs such as interferons and nucleoside (acid)/nucleotide (acid) analogs. While these drugs are effective in controlling the viral loads, they are not able to eliminate hepatitis B virus (HBV) from the body completely. Besides, side effects and drug resistance may by caused by the long-term use of these drugs. Several monoclonal antibodies (McAbs) against HBV, mostly against hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg), have been demonstrated with viral neutralization capability and with effective inhibition of HBV replication in relevant animal models. The use of a McAb individually or in combination with another therapy has the potentials to achieve functional cure of CHB. In this review, we summarized the encouraging results from the research and development of anti-HBV McAbs in clinical or pre-clinical development stage, aiming to provide new idea for the treatment of CHB.
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A safe and effective SARS-CoV-2 vaccine is essential to avert the on-going COVID-19 pandemic. Here, we developed a subunit vaccine, which is comprised of CHO-expressed spike ectodomain protein (StriFK) and nitrogen bisphosphonates-modified zinc-aluminum hybrid adjuvant (FH002C). This vaccine candidate rapidly elicited the robust humoral response, Th1/Th2 balanced helper CD4 T cell and CD8 T cell immune response in animal models. In mice, hamsters, and non-human primates, 2-shot and 3-shot immunization of StriFK-FH002C generated 28- to 38-fold and 47- to 269-fold higher neutralizing antibody titers than the human COVID-19 convalescent plasmas, respectively. More importantly, the StriFK-FH002C immunization conferred sterilizing immunity to prevent SARS-CoV-2 infection and transmission, which also protected animals from virus-induced weight loss, COVID-19-like symptoms, and pneumonia in hamsters. Vaccine-induced neutralizing and cell-based receptor-blocking antibody titers correlated well with protective efficacy in hamsters, suggesting vaccine-elicited protection is immune-associated. The StriFK-FH002C provided a promising SARS-CoV-2 vaccine candidate for further clinical evaluation.
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The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, caused by SARS-CoV-2 infection, has resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths. Cellular entry of SARS-CoV-2, which is mediated by the viral spike protein and host ACE2 receptor, is an essential target for the development of vaccines, therapeutic antibodies, and drugs. Using a mammalian cell expression system, we generated a recombinant fluorescent protein (Gamillus)-fused SARS-CoV-2 spike trimer (STG) to probe the viral entry process. In ACE2-expressing cells, we found that the STG probe has excellent performance in the live-cell visualization of receptor binding, cellular uptake, and intracellular trafficking of SARS-CoV-2 under virus-free conditions. The new system allows quantitative analyses of the inhibition potentials and detailed influence of COVID-19-convalescent human plasmas, neutralizing antibodies and compounds, providing a versatile tool for high-throughput screening and phenotypic characterization of SARS-CoV-2 entry inhibitors. This approach may also be adapted to develop a viral entry visualization system for other viruses.
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The global pandemic of Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a disaster for human society. A convenient and reliable in vitro neutralization assay is very important for the development of neutralizing antibodies, vaccines and other inhibitors. In this study, G protein-deficient vesicular stomatitis virus (VSVdG) bearing full-length and truncated spike (S) protein of SARS-CoV-2 were evaluated. The virus packaging efficiency of VSV-SARS-CoV-2-Sdel18 (S with C-terminal 18 amino acid truncation) is much higher than VSV-SARS-CoV-2-S. A neutralization assay for antibody screening and serum neutralizing titer quantification was established based on VSV-SARS-CoV-2-Sdel18 pseudovirus and human angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) overexpressed BHK21 cell (BHK21-hACE2). The experimental results can be obtained by automatically counting EGFP positive cell number at 12 hours after infection, making the assay convenient and high-throughput. The serum neutralizing titer of COVID-19 convalescent patients measured by VSV-SARS-CoV-2-Sdel18 pseudovirus assay has a good correlation with live SARS-CoV-2 assay. Seven neutralizing monoclonal antibodies targeting receptor binding domain (RBD) of SARS-CoV-2-S were obtained. This efficient and reliable pseudovirus assay model could facilitate the development of new drugs and vaccines.
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BackgroundThe novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 is a newly emerging virus. The antibody response in infected patient remains largely unknown, and the clinical values of antibody testing have not been fully demonstrated. MethodsA total of 173 patients with confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection were enrolled. Their serial plasma samples (n = 535) collected during the hospitalization period were tested for total antibodies (Ab), IgM and IgG against SARS-CoV-2 using immunoassays. The dynamics of antibodies with the progress and severity of disease was analyzed. ResultsAmong 173 patients, the seroconversion rate for Ab, IgM and IgG was 93.1% (161/173), 82.7% (143/173) and 64.7% (112/173), respectively. Twelve patients who had not seroconverted were those only blood samples at the early stage of illness were collected. The seroconversion sequentially appeared for Ab, IgM and then IgG, with a median time of 11, 12 and 14 days, respectively. The presence of antibodies was < 40% among patients in the first 7 days of illness, and then rapidly increased to 100.0%, 94.3% and 79.8% for Ab, IgM and IgG respectively since day 15 after onset. In contrast, the positive rate of RNA decreased from 66.7% (58/87) in samples collected before day 7 to 45.5% (25/55) during days 15 to 39. Combining RNA and antibody detections significantly improved the sensitivity of pathogenic diagnosis for COVID-19 patients (p < 0.001), even in early phase of 1-week since onset (p = 0.007). Moreover, a higher titer of Ab was independently associated with a worse clinical classification (p = 0.006). ConclusionsThe antibody detection offers vital clinical information during the course of SARS-CoV-2 infection. The findings provide strong empirical support for the routine application of serological testing in the diagnosis and management of COVID-19 patients.
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Objective@#To further observe the efficacy of combined transplantation of islet and bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (BMSC) in diabetic rats, PET-CT was used to trace cells in vivo to determine the homing and distribution of cells in vivo.@*Methods@#Streptozotocin (STZ)was used to construct a rat model of diabetes mellitus. BMSC could be isolated and cultured by full adherence method; islets were isolated by collagenase; Islets and BMSC were labeled with 18F-FDG in vitro. Diabetic rats were randomly divided into 4 groups, 15 rats in each group: A, Control group; B, Stem cell transplantation group; C, Islet Transplantation group; D, Combined transplantation group, a total of four groups, all transplanted through portal vein, PET-CT tracing the distribution of cells transplanted into the body.7 days after transplantation, the livers of each group were taken, and the homing and distribution of transplanted cells were detected by immunofluorescent staining.The SUV was calculated by the analysis of variance of random block, and the difference between groups was compared by t-test.@*Results@#PET-CT results showed that BMSC were mainly distributed uniformly in the right liver, and the islets of the pancreas were mainly clustered in terminal branches of hepatic portal vein, and BMSC were around the islets of pancreas, but there was no obvious development in the liver of the control group.@*Conclusions@#PET-CT can directly reveal the distribution of islets and BMSC in liver after transplantation through portal vein.
ABSTRACT
Objective To further observe the efficacy of combined transplantation of islet and bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (BMSC) in diabetic rats ,PET-CT was used to trace cells in vivo to determine the homing and distribution of cells in vivo .Methods Streptozotocin (STZ)was used to construct a rat model of diabetes mellitus .BMSC could be isolated and cultured by full adherence method;islets were isolated by collagenase ;Islets and BMSC were labeled with 18F-FDG in vitro . Diabetic rats were randomly divided into 4 groups ,15 rats in each group :A ,Control group;B ,Stem cell transplantation group ;C ,Islet Transplantation group ;D ,Combined transplantation group ,a total of four groups ,all transplanted through portal vein ,PET-CT tracing the distribution of cells transplanted into the body .7 days after transplantation ,the livers of each group were taken ,and the homing and distribution of transplanted cells were detected by immunofluorescent staining .The SUV was calculated by the analysis of variance of random block , and the difference between groups was compared by t-test .Results PET-CT results showed that BMSC were mainly distributed uniformly in the right liver ,and the islets of the pancreas were mainly clustered in terminal branches of hepatic portal vein ,and BMSC were around the islets of pancreas ,but there was no obvious development in the liver of the control group .Conclusions PET-CT can directly reveal the distribution of islets and BMSC in liver after transplantation through portal vein .
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Objective:To get specific monoclonal antibodies ( mAbs) against PD-L1 which can block PD-1/PD-L1 binding, and explore the feasibility of its application on the treatment of chronic HBV infection preliminarily by in vitro and in vivo model. Methods:E. coli expression and series chromatography purification system were employed to get human and mouse PD-1/PD-L1 that had binding activity in vitro. By immunizing BALB/c mouse with purified recombination proteins of PD-L1,mAb hybridoma cell lines against PD-L1 were obtained. The reactivity with human/mice PD-L1 of individual antibody and the interaction blocking activity of the mAbs to PD-1/PD-L1 in vitro were examined by indirect chemiluminescence immune assay. Results: 8 cell lines against PD-L1 were obtained and 2 Anti-PDL1 mAbs (Ab5 &Ab6) performed strong immune activity to human/mice PD-L1 and blocking activity to PD-1/PD-L1. In the PBMC stimulation experiment of chronic HBV patient,Ab5 and Ab6 could promote theγ-IFN levels. With HBV in-fecting mice model,intravenous injections of these mAbs induced dramatically decrease of HBV DNA copies about 20 times, HBsAg levels in serum reduced to 30% of the baseline level. Conclusion:We obtained 2 PD-L1 mAbs with the reactivity to human/mice PD-L1 and blocking activity to PD-1/PD-L1. The 2 mAbs can promote T cell function in PBMC stimulation culture of chronic HBV patient, have significant antiviral effect in HBV transgenic mice and can be candidates for immunotherapy applications.
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OBJECTIVE: To optimize the formula and preparation technology of gel-matrix sustained release tablet of nicotinic acid(GSTNA).METHODS: The formula of GSTNA was optimized by orthogonal experiment with the amount of hydrophilic gel-matrix material HPMC(K15M,E15-LV) and that of adjuvant calcium hydrogen phosphate(CHP) as factors and with the in vitro release rates as index.Meanwhile,the verification test on the intra-and inter-batch release rates of the samples was performed.RESULTS: The optimum formula could be seen as follows: the ratios of HPMC(K15M,E15-LV) and CHP were 4%,40% and 25% respectively.The GSTNA prepared in this formula achieved a sustained drug release of up to 12 h,and both the intra-batch homogenicity and the inter-batch reproducibility were satisfactory.CONCLUSION: The GSTNA is reasonable in formula and simple in preparation technology.
