Frontiers in Microbiology (Sep 2022)

New formulation of a recombinant anthrax vaccine stabilised with structurally modified plant viruses

  • Dmitriy L. Granovskiy,
  • Ekaterina M. Ryabchevskaya,
  • Ekaterina A. Evtushenko,
  • Olga A. Kondakova,
  • Marina V. Arkhipenko,
  • Tatiana B. Kravchenko,
  • Irina V. Bakhteeva,
  • Vitalii S. Timofeev,
  • Nikolai A. Nikitin,
  • Olga V. Karpova

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2022.1003969
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 13

Abstract

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Anthrax is a disease caused by Bacillus anthracis. The most promising approach to the development of anthrax vaccine is use of the anthrax protective antigen (PA). At the same time, recombinant PA is a very unstable protein. Previously, the authors have designed a stable modified recombinant anthrax protective antigen with inactivated proteolytic sites and substituted deamidation sites (rPA83m). As a second approach to recombinant PA stabilisation, plant virus spherical particles (SPs) were used as a stabiliser. The combination of these two approaches was shown to be the most effective. Here, the authors report the results of a detailed study of the stability, immunogenicity and protectiveness of rPA83m + SPs compositions. These compositions were shown to be stable, provided high anti-rPA83m antibody titres in guinea pigs and were able to protect them from a fully virulent 81/1 Bacillus anthracis strain. Given these facts, the formulation of rPA83m + SPs compositions is considered to be a prospective anthrax vaccine candidate.

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