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Coronaviruses

A nasal omicron vaccine booster elicits potent neutralizing antibody response against emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants

, , ORCID Icon, , ORCID Icon & ORCID Icon
Pages 964-967 | Received 31 Jan 2022, Accepted 08 Mar 2022, Published online: 30 Mar 2022
 

ABSTRACT

SARS-CoV-2 has caused the COVID-19 pandemic since early 2020. As of January 2022, the worldwide spreading of SARS-CoV-2 leads to approximately 0.35 billion of human infections and five millions of deaths. Current vaccination is one of the effective ways to control SARS-CoV-2 transmission and reduce the disease severity. However, the antibody level against the immunogen significantly drops several months after the standard two-dose vaccination, and hence a third or fourth dose booster (the same immunogen) has been suggested to boost the antibody response. Here, we described an ultra-effective nasal vaccine booster that potently induced the extraordinary high-level of neutralizing antibody in pre-vaccinated mice. The vaccine booster is composed of a recombinant receptor binding domain of SARS-CoV-2 spike (either wild-type or omicron) fused with a domain of SARS-CoV-2 nucleoprotein. In the absence of adjuvants, a single intranasal administration of the booster in pre-vaccinated mice significantly induced systemic and mucosal antibody responses as evidenced by the elevation of the cross-variant neutralizing antibody and induction of IgA in bronchoalveolar lavage respectively. Most importantly, the single dose nasal vaccine booster (omicron version) potently enhanced the neutralizing activity against authentic SARS-CoV-2 omicron virus infection. Taken together, the induction of respiratory mucosal immunity and the enhancement of cross-variant neutralizing activity by the nasal vaccine booster warrants further clinical trials in humans.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by funding from the Centre for Virology, Vaccinology and Therapeutics, Hong Kong Science and Technology Park, Hong Kong SAR.