Given the aggressive spread of COVID-19-related deaths, there is an urgent public health need to support the development of vaccine candidates to rapidly improve the available control measures against SARS-CoV-2. To meet this need, we are leveraging our existing vaccine platform to target SARS-CoV-2. Here, we generated cellular heat shock chaperone protein, glycoprotein 96 (gp96), to deliver SARS-CoV-2 protein S (spike) to the immune system and to induce cell-mediated immune responses. We showed that our vaccine platform effectively stimulates a robust cellular immune response against protein S. Moreover, we confirmed that gp96-Ig, secreted from allogeneic cells expressing full-length protein S, generates powerful, protein S polyepitope-specific CD4+ and CD8+ T cell responses in both lung interstitium and airways. These findings were further strengthened by the observation that protein-S -specific CD8+ T cells were induced in human leukocyte antigen HLA-A2.1 transgenic mice thus providing encouraging translational data that the vaccine is likely to work in humans, in the context of SARS-CoV-2 antigen presentation.
【저자키워드】 COVID-19, Vaccine, CD8+ T cells, Lungs, heat shock protein, glycoprotein 96, SARS-CoV-2 protein S, 【초록키워드】 public health, SARS-CoV-2, Cellular immune response, lung, immune system, Antigen, Spread, Protein, humans, response, vaccine candidate, Allogeneic, glycoprotein, vaccine platform, SARS-CoV-2 antigen, protein S, CD8+ T cell, cellular, deaths, Heat shock, airways, leukocyte, Support, observation, transgenic mice, measure, CD4+, Cell-mediated immune responses, SARS-CoV-2 protein, chaperone, Cell, robust, full-length protein, IMPROVE, generate, induce, expressing, the vaccine, stimulate, translational, secreted, 【제목키워드】 SARS-CoV-2, induction, CD8+,