Vaccines (Nov 2021)

Production and Characterization of Nucleocapsid and RBD Cocktail Antigens of SARS-CoV-2 in <i>Nicotiana benthamiana</i> Plant as a Vaccine Candidate against COVID-19

  • Tarlan Mamedov,
  • Damla Yuksel,
  • Merve Ilgın,
  • Irem Gürbüzaslan,
  • Burcu Gulec,
  • Gulshan Mammadova,
  • Aykut Ozdarendeli,
  • Hazel Yetiskin,
  • Busra Kaplan,
  • Shaikh Terkis Islam Pavel,
  • Muhammet Ali Uygut,
  • Gulnara Hasanova

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/vaccines9111337
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 9, no. 11
p. 1337

Abstract

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The COVID-19 pandemic has put global public health at high risk, rapidly spreading around the world. Although several COVID-19 vaccines are available for mass immunization, the world still urgently needs highly effective, reliable, cost-effective, and safe SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus vaccines, as well as antiviral and therapeutic drugs, to control the COVID-19 pandemic given the emerging variant strains of the virus. Recently, we successfully produced receptor-binding domain (RBD) variants in the Nicotiana benthamiana plant as promising vaccine candidates against COVID-19 and demonstrated that mice immunized with these antigens elicited a high titer of RBD-specific antibodies with potent neutralizing activity against SARS-CoV-2. In this study, we engineered the nucleocapsid (N) protein and co-expressed it with RBD of SARS-CoV-2 in Nicotiana benthamiana plant to produce an antigen cocktail. The purification yields were about 22 or 24 mg of pure protein/kg of plant biomass for N or N+RBD antigens, respectively. The purified plant produced N protein was recognized by N protein-specific monoclonal and polyclonal antibodies demonstrating specific reactivity of mAb to plant-produced N protein. In this study, for the first time, we report the co-expression of RBD with N protein to produce a cocktail antigen of SARS-CoV-2, which elicited high-titer antibodies with potent neutralizing activity against SARS-CoV-2. Thus, obtained data support that a plant-produced antigen cocktail, developed in this study, is a promising vaccine candidate against COVID-19.

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