Complete protection by a single dose skin patch delivered SARS-CoV-2 spike vaccine

McMillan, Christopher L.D.; Choo, Jovin J.Y.; Idris, Adi; Supramaniam, Aroon; Modhiran, Naphak; Amarilla, Alberto A.; Isaacs, Ariel; Cheung, Stacey T.M.; Liang, Benjamin; Bielefeldt-Ohmann, Helle; Azuar, Armira; Acharya, Dhruba; Kelly, Gabrielle; Fernando, Germain J.P.; Landsberg, Michael J.; Khromykh, Alexander A.; Watterson, Daniel; Young, Paul R.; McMillan, Nigel A.J.; Muller, David A.

SARS-CoV-2 has infected over 160 million people and resulted in more than 3.3 million deaths, and we still face many challenges in the rollout of vaccines. Here, we use the high-density microarray patch to deliver a SARS-CoV-2 spike subunit vaccine directly to the skin. We show the vaccine, dry-coated on the patch is thermostable, and delivery of spike via HD-MAP induced greater cellular and antibody immune responses, with serum able to potently neutralize clinically relevant isolates including those from the B.1.1.7 and B.1.351 lineages. Finally, a single dose of HD-MAP-delivered spike provided complete protection from a lethal virus challenge, demonstrating that HD-MAP delivery of a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine is superior to traditional needle-and-syringe vaccination and has the potential to greatly impact the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.