Plant-produced RBD and cocktail-based vaccine candidates are highly effective against SARS-CoV-2, independently of its emerging variants

  1. Tarlan Mamedov
  2. Damla Yuksel
  3. Irem Gurbuzaslan
  4. Merve Ilgin
  5. Burcu Gulec
  6. Gulshan Mammadova
  7. Aykut Ozdarendeli
  8. Shaikh Terkis Islam Pavel
  9. Hazel Yetiskin
  10. Busra Kaplan
  11. Muhammet Ali Uygut
  12. Gulnara Hasanova

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Abstract

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is a novel and highly pathogenic coronavirus that caused an outbreak in Wuhan City, China, in 2019 and then spread rapidly throughout the world. Although several coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccines are currently available for mass immunization, they are less effective against emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants, especially the Omicron (B.1.1.529). Recently, we successfully produced receptor-binding domain (RBD) variants of the spike (S) protein of SARS-CoV-2 and an antigen cocktail in Nicotiana benthamiana , which are highly produced in plants and elicited high-titer antibodies with potent neutralizing activity against SARS-CoV-2. In this study, based on neutralization ability, we demonstrate that plant-produced RBD and cocktail-based vaccine candidates are highly effective against SARS-CoV-2, independently of its emerging variants. These data demonstrate that plant-produced RBD and cocktail-based proteins are the most promising vaccine candidates and may protect against Delta and Omicron-mediated COVID-19. This is the first report describing vaccines against SARS-CoV-2, which demonstrate significant activities against Delta and Omicron variants.

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  1. Version published to 10.3389/fpls.2023.1202570
  2. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2022.04.07.487347: (What is this?)

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

    Table 1: Rigor

    EthicsField Sample Permit: Mice studies were conducted at Akdeniz University Experimental Animal Care in compliance with the ARRIVE guidelines, and with the permission of the Animal Experiments Local Ethics Committee for Animal Experiments at Akdeniz (under protocol number of 1155/2020.07.0) with the supervision of a veterinarian.
    IACUC: Mice studies were conducted at Akdeniz University Experimental Animal Care in compliance with the ARRIVE guidelines, and with the permission of the Animal Experiments Local Ethics Committee for Animal Experiments at Akdeniz (under protocol number of 1155/2020.07.0) with the supervision of a veterinarian.
    Sex as a biological variableImmunogenicity Studies: Immunogenicity studies of gRBD, dRBD and N+RBD in mice were perforemed in groups of 6–7 week old Balb/c male animals (six mice/group) as described recently (4).
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Cell Line Authenticationnot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Experimental Models: Cell Lines
    SentencesResources
    Before the day of the experiment, Vero E6 cells (ATCC, CRL-1586) (2×104 cells/100ul/well) were passaged to 96 well plate.
    Vero E6
    suggested: None
    Recombinant DNA
    SentencesResources
    Purification of plant-produced gRBD, dRBD and N+RBD proteins was performed from 20 g of frozen leaves, infiltrated with the pEAQ-RBD-Flag-KDEL (with or without pGreenII-Endo H), or pEAQ-RBD-Flag-KDEL+ pEAQ-N-Flag-KDEL constructs, using anti-FLAG affinity chromatography as described recently (4,5).
    pEAQ-RBD-Flag-KDEL
    suggested: None
    pEAQ-RBD-Flag-KDEL+
    suggested: None
    pEAQ-N-Flag-KDEL
    suggested: None

    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.

    Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.

    About SciScore

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  3. Version published to 10.1101/2022.04.07.487347v1 on bioRxiv