Volume 32, No 11, Nov 2022

ISSN: 1001-0602 
EISSN: 1748-7838 2018 
impact factor 17.848* 
(Clarivate Analytics, 2019)

Volume 32 Issue 11, November 2022: 1022-1025

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

mRNA vaccines expressing homo-prototype/Omicron and hetero-chimeric RBD-dimers against SARS-CoV-2

Yuxuan Han^1,† , Yaling An^1,† , Qian Chen^2,3,† , Kun Xu^4,5,† , Xueyuan Liu^6,† , Senyu Xu⁴ , Huixin Duan¹ , Annette B. Vogel⁷ , Uğur Şahin⁷ , Qihui Wang^1,3,* , Lianpan Dai^1,3,5,* , George F. Gao^1,3,4,*

¹Savaid Medical School, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
²Institutes of Physical Science and Information Technology, Anhui University, Hefei, Anhui, China
³CAS Key Laboratory of Pathogen Microbiology and Immunology, Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
⁴Research Network of Immunity and Health (RNIH), Beijing Institutes of Life Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
⁵Key Laboratory of Tropical Translational Medicine of Ministry of Education, School of Tropical Medicine and Laboratory Medicine, The First Affiliated Hospital, Hainan Medical University, Haikou, Hainan, China
⁶School of Public Health, Cheeloo College of Medicine, Shandong University, Jinan, Shandong, China
⁷BioNTech SE, Mainz, Germany
^†These authors contributed equally: Yuxuan Han, Yaling An, Qian Chen, Kun Xu, Xueyuan Liu
Correspondence: Qihui Wang(wangqihui@im.ac.cn)Lianpan Dai(dailp@im.ac.cn)George F. Gao(gaof@im.ac.cn)

Dear Editor,

Since emerging in 2019, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has caused an ongoing human pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).1 Vaccines against COVID-19 were developed and rolled out for large-scale vaccination, including two mRNA vaccines (BNT162b2 and mRNA-1273) encoding SARS-CoV-2 pre-fusion spike protein.2,3 These mRNA vaccines have demonstrated strong immunogenicity and high efficacy, and offer the additional advantage of rapid development.4,5 Further mRNA vaccine candidates include those targeting the receptor-binding domain (RBD), including one from our group,6,7 which mediates engagement of the viral spike protein with its cellular receptor human angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (hACE2). Previously, we reported the development of a protein subunit COVID-19 vaccine, ZF2001, based on the dimeric RBD of viral spike protein as immunogen.8,9 This vaccine showed an efficacy of 81.4% against symptomatic COVID-19 in the Phase 3 clinical trial,10 and has been approved in China, Uzbekistan, Indonesia and Colombia. To leverage advantages of the mRNA platform, we applied the RBD-dimer immunogen design as an mRNA vaccine. Here, we report the immunogenicity and efficacy of the RBD-dimer mRNA vaccine in mice. We also demonstrate that the flexibility of mRNA platform can be highly advantageous for rapid immunogen updates according to SARS-CoV-2 variants, exemplified by Delta and Omicron.

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41422-022-00720-z

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