CoVac501, a self-adjuvanting peptide vaccine conjugated with TLR7 agonists, against SARS-CoV-2 induces protective immunity
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Abstract
Safe, economical and effective vaccines against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) are needed to achieve adequate herd immunity and halt the pandemic. We have constructed a novel SARS-CoV-2 vaccine, CoVac501, which is a self-adjuvanting peptide vaccine conjugated with Toll-like receptor 7 (TLR7) agonists. The vaccine contains two immunodominant peptides screened from receptor-binding domain (RBD) and is fully chemically synthesized. And the vaccine has optimized nanoemulsion formulation, outstanding stability and safety. In non-human primates (NHPs), CoVac501 elicited high and persistent titers of RBD-specific and protective neutralizing antibodies (NAbs), which were also effective to RBD mutations. CoVac501 was found to elicit the increase of memory T cells, antigen-specific CD8 + T cell responses and Th1-biased CD4 + T cell immune responses in NHPs. More importantly, the sera from the immunized NHPs can prevent infection of live SARS-CoV-2 in vitro.
One-Sentence Summary
A novel SARS-CoV-2 vaccine we developed, CoVac501, which is a fully chemically synthesized and self-adjuvanting peptides conjugated with TLR7 agonists, can induce high-efficient humoral and cellular immune responses against SARS-CoV-2.
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SciScore for 10.1101/2021.04.10.439275: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Table 2: Resources
Software and Algorithms Sentences Resources S1 to S8 References Materials and Methods: Methodssuggested: NoneResults 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: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:Our present study has some limitations that will be addressed in further research. First, the specific role and mechanism of action of TLR7 agonist …
SciScore for 10.1101/2021.04.10.439275: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Table 2: Resources
Software and Algorithms Sentences Resources S1 to S8 References Materials and Methods: Methodssuggested: NoneResults 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: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:Our present study has some limitations that will be addressed in further research. First, the specific role and mechanism of action of TLR7 agonist SZU-101 in the immune effect of CoVac501 remains to be investigated, especially how TLR7 agonists promote antibody affinity maturation and immune memory formation in humoral immunity in vivo. Second, the components and involving mechanism related to lymph node aggregation and better in vivo immune effect of the peptide vaccine caused by F2 nanoemulsion rather than AS03 nanoemulsion also remains to be elucidated. In conclusion, we have developed a novel SARS-CoV-2 vaccine CoVac501, which is a self-adjuvanting peptide vaccine conjugated with TLR7 agonists. CoVac501 is a fully chemically synthesized vaccine with outstanding thermal stability and optimized nanoemulsion formulation. CoVac501 can induce high level, protective and long-lasting neutralizing humoral immune responses and Th1-biased T-cell immune responses in NHPs. Besides, CoVac501 was resistant to multiple mutations of amino acid residues in RBDs. CoVac501 holds great potential for further clinical development and application.
Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.
Results from Barzooka: We found bar graphs of continuous data. We recommend replacing bar graphs with more informative graphics, as many different datasets can lead to the same bar graph. The actual data may suggest different conclusions from the summary statistics. For more information, please see Weissgerber et al (2015).
Results from JetFighter: Please consider improving the rainbow (“jet”) colormap(s) used on page 15. At least one figure is not accessible to readers with colorblindness and/or is not true to the data, i.e. not perceptually uniform.
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.
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