An Effective CTL Peptide Vaccine for Ebola Zaire Based on Survivors’ CD8+ Targeting of a Particular Nucleocapsid Protein Epitope with Potential Implications for COVID-19 Vaccine Design

CV Herst; S Burkholz; J Sidney; A Sette; PE Harris; S Massey; T Brasel; E Cunha-Neto; DS Rosa; WCH Chao; R Carback; T Hodge; L Wang; S Ciotlos; P Lloyd; R Rubsamen

We show here that the H2-D b restricted epitopes VSV (RGYVYQGL) and OVA (SIINFEKL), when administered to C57BL/6 mice, each produce a CD8+ ELISPOT response to the administered peptide antigen with no statistically 80 significant CD4+ response measurable by ELISPOT as shown in Figure 2c , and We used this adjuvanted microsphere peptide vaccine platform to immunize C57BL/6 mice with NP43-53, the CTL+ class I peptide antigen from the Ebola Ziare NP protein identified as protective by Wilson et al. [73] . Microspheres 85 containing NP43-53 and CpG were prepared as a dry powder formulation and suspended before use in a PBS injectate solution containing MPLA, and administered intradermally via injection at the base of the tail into mice as described in a previous publication [48] . As illustrated in Figure 1c , there was no statistically significant difference between the ELISPOT data for the vaccinated mice 90 versus the response seen in the negative ELISPOT controls.