Jérémy Brunet, Zaineb Choucha, Marion Gransagne, Houda Tabbal, Min-Wen Ku, Julian Buchrieser, Priyanka Fernandes, Damien Batalie, Jodie Lopez, Laurence Ma, Evelyne Dufour, Emeline Simon, David Hardy, Stéphane Petres, Françoise Guinet, Helene Strick-Marchand, Marc Monot, Pierre Charneau, Laleh Majlessi, W Paul Duprex, Christiane Gerke, Annette Martin, Nicolas Escriou
In the early COVID-19 pandemic with urgent need for countermeasures, we aimed at developing a replicating viral vaccine using the highly efficacious measles vaccine as vector, a promising technology with prior clinical proof of concept. Building on our successful pre-clinical development of a measles virus (MV)-based vaccine candidate against the related SARS-CoV, we evaluated several recombinant MV expressing codon-optimized SARS-CoV-2 spike glycoprotein. Candidate V591 expressing a prefusion-stabilized spike through introduction of two proline residues in HR1 hinge loop, together with deleted S1/S2 furin cleavage site and additional inactivation of the endoplasmic reticulum retrieval signal, was the most potent in eliciting neutralizing antibodies in mice...
April 2, 2024: Journal of Virology