Pia Gattinger, Bernhard Kratzer, Inna Tulaeva, Katarzyna Niespodziana, Anna Ohradanova-Repic, Laura Gebetsberger, Kristina Borochova, Erika Garner-Spitzer, Doris Trapin, Gerhard Hofer, Walter Keller, Isabella Baumgartner, Ivan Tancevski, Musa Khaitov, Alexander Karaulov, Hannes Stockinger, Ursula Wiedermann, Winfried F Pickl, Rudolf Valenta
BACKGROUND: Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is responsible for the ongoing global COVID-19 pandemic. One possibility to control the pandemic is to induce sterilizing immunity through the induction and maintenance of neutralizing antibodies preventing SARS-CoV-2 from entering human cells to replicate in. METHODS: We report the construction and in vitro and in vivo characterization of a SARS-CoV-2 subunit vaccine (PreS-RBD) based on a structurally folded recombinant fusion protein consisting of two SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein receptor-binding domains (RBD) fused to the N- and C-terminus of hepatitis B virus (HBV) surface antigen PreS to enable the two unrelated proteins serving as immunologic carriers for each other...
August 2022: Allergy