Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic is entering a new era with the approval of many SARS-CoV-2 vaccines. In spite of the restoration of an almost normal way of life thanks to the immune protection elicited by these innovative vaccines, we are still facing high viral circulation, with a significant number of deaths. To further explore alternative vaccination platforms, we developed COVID-eVax—a genetic vaccine based on plasmid DNA encoding the RBD domain of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. Here, we describe the correlation between immune responses and the evolution of viral infection in ferrets infected with the live virus. We demonstrate COVID-eVax immunogenicity as means of antibody response and, above all, a significant T-cell response, thus proving the critical role of T-cell immunity, in addition to the neutralizing antibody activity, in controlling viral spread.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 1178 |
| Journal | Vaccines |
| Volume | 10 |
| Issue number | 8 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Aug 2022 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2022 by the authors.
Keywords
- DNA vaccines
- SARS-CoV-2
- ferrets
- immune responses