α-Hemolysin-Aided Oligomerization of the Spike Protein RBD Resulted in Improved Immunogenicity and Neutralization Against SARS-CoV-2 Variants

Zou, Jintao; Jing, Haiming; Zhang, Xiaoli; Liu, Yiheng; Zhao, Zhuo; Duan, Lianli; Yuan, Yue; Chen, Zhifu; Gou, Qiang; Xiong, Qingshan; Li, Sisi; Yang, Feng; Zeng, Hao; Zou, Quanming; Zhang, Jinyong

The increase in confirmed COVID-19 cases and SARS-CoV-2 variants calls for the development of safe and broad cross-protective vaccines. The RBD of the spike protein was considered to be a safe and effective candidate antigen. However, the low immunogenicity limited its application in vaccine development. Herein, we designed and obtained an RBD heptamer (mHla-RBD) based on a carrier protein-aided assembly strategy. The molecular weight of mHla-RBD is up to 450 kDa, approximately 10 times higher than that of the RBD monomer. When formulated with alum adjuvant, mHla-RBD immunization significantly increased the immunogenicity of RBD, as indicated by increased titers of RBD-specific antibodies, neutralizing antibodies, Th2 cellular immune response, and pseudovirus neutralization activity, when compared to RBD monomer. Furthermore, we confirmed that RBD-specific antibodies predominantly target conformational epitopes, which was approximately 200 times that targeting linear epitopes. Finally, a pseudovirus neutralization assay revealed that neutralizing antibodies induced by mHla-RBD against different SARS-CoV-2 variants were comparable to those against the wild-type virus and showed broad-spectrum neutralizing activity toward different SARS-CoV-2 variants. Our results demonstrated that mHla-RBD is a promising candidate antigen for development of SARS-CoV-2 vaccines and the mHla could serve as a universal carrier protein for antigen design.