More than 65 million people have been confirmed infection with SARS-CoV-2 and more than 1 million have died from COVID-19 and this pandemic remains critical worldwide. Effective vaccines are one of the most important strategies to limit the pandemic. Here, we report a construction strategy of DNA vaccine candidates expressing full length wild type SARS-CoV-2 spike (S) protein, S1 or S2 region and their immunogenicity in mice. All DNA vaccine constructs of pCMVkan-S, -S1 and -S2 induced high levels of specific binding IgG that showed a balance of IgG1/IgG2a response. However, only the sera from mice vaccinated with pCMKkan-S or -S1 DNA vaccines could inhibit viral RBD and ACE2 interaction. The highest neutralizing antibody (NAb) titer was found in pCMVkan-S group, followed by -S1, while -S2 showed the lowest PRNT50 titers. The geometric mean titers (GMTs) were 2,551, 1,005 and 291 for pCMVkan-S, -S1 and -S2, respectively. pCMVkan-S construct vaccine also induced the highest magnitude and breadth of T cells response. Analysis of IFN-γ positive cells after stimulation with SARS-CoV-2 spike peptide pools were 2,991, 1,376 and 1,885 SFC/106 splenocytes for pCMVkan-S, -S1 and -S2, respectively. Our findings highlighted that full-length S antigen is more potent than the truncated spike (S1 or S2) in inducing of neutralizing antibody and robust T cell responses.

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BackgroundCD8+ T cell responses play an important role in the control of HIV-1. The extensive sequence diversity of HIV-1 represents a critical hurdle to developing an effective HIV-1 vaccine, and it is likely that regional-specific vaccine strains will be required to overcome the diversity of the different HIV-1 clades distributed world-wide. Unfortunately, little is known about the CD8+ T cell responses against CRF01_AE, which is responsible for the majority of infections in Southeast Asia.Methodology/Principal FindingsTo identify dominant CD8+ T cell responses recognized in HIV-1 clade CRF01_AE infected subjects we drew upon data from an immunological screen of 100 HIV-1 clade CRF01_AE infected subjects using IFN-gamma ELISpot to characterize a novel immunodominant CD8+ T cell response in HIV-1 Gag restricted by HLA-Cw*0102 (p24, 277YSPVSILDI285, YI9). Over 75% of Cw*0102+ve subjects targeted this epitope, representing the strongest response in more than a third of these individuals. This novel CD8 epitope was located in a highly conserved region of HIV-1 Gag known to contain immunodominant CD8 epitopes, which are restricted by HLA-B*57 and -B*27 in clade B infection. Nonetheless, viral escape in this epitope was frequently observed in Cw*0102+ve subjects, suggestive of strong selection pressure being exerted by this common CD8+ T cell response.Conclusions/SignificanceAs HLA-Cw*0102 is frequently expressed in the Thai population (allelic frequency of 16.8%), this immunodominant Cw*0102-restricted Gag epitope may represent an attractive candidate for vaccines specific to CRF01_AE and may help facilitate further studies of immunopathogenesis in this understudied HIV-1 clade.

Establishment of an mRNA vaccine platform in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) is important to enhance vaccine accessibility and ensure future pandemic preparedness. Here, we describe the preclinical studies of a SARS-CoV-2 mRNA encoding prefusion-unstabilized ectodomain spike protein encapsulated in lipid nanoparticles (LNP) "ChulaCov19". In BALB/c mice, ChulaCov19 at 0.2, 1, 10, and 30 μg given 2 doses, 21 days apart, elicited robust neutralizing antibody (NAb) and T cells responses in a dose-dependent relationship. The geometric mean titer (GMT) of micro-virus neutralizing (micro-VNT) antibody against wild-type virus was 1,280, 11,762, 54,047, and 62,084, respectively. Higher doses induced better cross-neutralizing antibody against Delta and Omicron variants. This elicited specific immunogenicity was significantly higher than those induced by homologous prime-boost with inactivated (CoronaVac) or viral vector (AZD1222) vaccine. In heterologous prime-boost study, mice primed with either CoronaVac or AZD1222 vaccine and boosted with 5 μg ChulaCov19 generated NAb 7-fold higher against wild-type virus (WT) and was also significantly higher against Omicron (BA.1 and BA.4/5) than homologous CoronaVac or AZD1222 vaccination. AZD1222-prime/mRNA-boost had mean spike-specific IFN-γ positive T cells of 3,725 SFC/106 splenocytes, which was significantly higher than all groups except homologous ChulaCov19. Challenge study in human-ACE-2-expressing transgenic mice showed that ChulaCov19 at 1 μg or 10 μg protected mice from COVID-19 symptoms, prevented SARS-CoV-2 viremia, significantly reduced tissue viral load in nasal turbinate, brain, and lung tissues 99.9-100%, and without anamnestic of Ab response which indicated its protective efficacy. ChulaCov19 is therefore a promising mRNA vaccine candidate either as a primary or a boost vaccination and has entered clinical development.