PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Brandys, Pascal
AU  - Montagutelli, Xavier
AU  - Merenkova, Irena
AU  - Barut, Güliz T.
AU  - Thiel, Volker
AU  - Schork, Nicholas J.
AU  - Trüeb, Bettina
AU  - Conquet, Laurine
AU  - Deng, Aihua
AU  - Antanasijevic, Aleksandar
AU  - Lee, Hyun-Ku
AU  - Valière, Martine
AU  - Sindhu, Anoop
AU  - Singh, Gita
AU  - Herold, Jens
TI  - A mRNA vaccine encoding for a RBD 60-mer nanoparticle elicits neutralizing antibodies and protective immunity against the SARS-CoV-2 delta variant in transgenic K18-hACE2 mice
AID  - 10.1101/2022.03.21.485224
DP  - 2022 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2022.03.21.485224
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2022/03/22/2022.03.21.485224.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2022/03/22/2022.03.21.485224.full
AB  - Two years into the COVID-19 pandemic there is still a need for vaccines to effectively control the spread of novel SARS-CoV-2 variants and associated cases of severe disease. Here we report a messenger RNA vaccine directly encoding for a nanoparticle displaying 60 receptor binding domains (RBDs) of SARS-CoV-2 that acts as a highly effective antigen. A construct encoding the RBD of the delta variant elicits robust neutralizing antibody response with neutralizing titers an order of magnitude above currently approved mRNA vaccines. The construct also provides protective immunity against the delta variant in a widely used transgenic mouse model. We ultimately find that the proposed mRNA RBD nanoparticle-based vaccine provides a flexible platform for rapid development and will likely be of great value in combatting current and future SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern.Competing Interest StatementPascal Brandys and Jens Herold are the founders and owners of Phylex BioSciences, Inc., the company that holds IP related to RBD-NP. Pascal Brandys is a named inventor on several RBD-NP vaccine patents. The other authors declare no commercial or financial conflict of interest.