Analysis of SARS-CoV-2 spike glycosylation reveals shedding of a vaccine candidate

  1. Juliane Brun
  2. Snežana Vasiljevic
  3. Bevin Gangadharan
  4. Mario Hensen
  5. Anu V. Chandran
  6. Michelle L. Hill
  7. J.L. Kiappes
  8. Raymond A. Dwek
  9. Dominic S. Alonzi
  10. Weston B. Struwe
  11. Nicole Zitzmann

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Abstract

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 is the causative pathogen of the COVID-19 pandemic which as of Nov 15, 2020 has claimed 1,319,946 lives worldwide. Vaccine development focuses on the viral trimeric spike glycoprotein as the main target of the humoral immune response. Viral spikes carry glycans that facilitate immune evasion by shielding specific protein epitopes from antibody neutralisation. Immunogen integrity is therefore important for glycoprotein-based vaccine candidates. Here we show how site-specific glycosylation differs between virus-derived spikes and spike proteins derived from a viral vectored SARS-CoV-2 vaccine candidate. We show that their distinctive cellular secretion pathways result in different protein glycosylation and secretion patterns, which may have implications for the resulting immune response and future vaccine design.

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    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.11.16.384594: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board Statementnot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

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  2. Version published to 10.1101/2020.11.16.384594v1 on bioRxiv