Nature Communications (Aug 2022)

Promotion of neutralizing antibody-independent immunity to wild-type and SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern using an RBD-Nucleocapsid fusion protein

  • Julia T. Castro,
  • Patrick Azevedo,
  • Marcílio J. Fumagalli,
  • Natalia S. Hojo-Souza,
  • Natalia Salazar,
  • Gregório G. Almeida,
  • Livia I. Oliveira,
  • Lídia Faustino,
  • Lis R. Antonelli,
  • Tomas G. Marçal,
  • Marconi Augusto,
  • Bruno Valiate,
  • Alex Fiorini,
  • Bruna Rattis,
  • Simone G. Ramos,
  • Mariela Piccin,
  • Osvaldo Campos Nonato,
  • Luciana Benevides,
  • Rubens Magalhães,
  • Bruno Cassaro,
  • Gabriela Burle,
  • Daniel Doro,
  • Jorge Kalil,
  • Edson Durigon,
  • Andrés Salazar,
  • Otávia Caballero,
  • Helton Santiago,
  • Alexandre Machado,
  • João S. Silva,
  • Flávio da Fonseca,
  • Ana Paula Fernandes,
  • Santuza R. Teixeira,
  • Ricardo T. Gazzinelli

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-32547-y
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 13, no. 1
pp. 1 – 16

Abstract

Read online

Protection against SARS-CoV-2 infection involves T cell and B cell responses but only studying one or the other has proved difficult. Here the authors immunise with a fusion protein construct of N and RBD proteins from SARS-CoV-2 and find that this promotes protection in animal models preferentially via T cells.