Design of Replication-Competent VSV- and Ervebo-Vectored Vaccines Against SARS-CoV-2

Methods Mol Biol. 2022:2410:193-208. doi: 10.1007/978-1-0716-1884-4_9.

Abstract

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), is a global public health emergency. Several vaccine candidates have been developed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. One approach is to construct live-recombinant viruses expressing the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein (S) as vaccine candidates. The vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) vector is a mature vaccine platform which was successfully developed as a vaccine against Ebola virus (EBOV), leading to its licensure by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in December 2019. Based on this work, we developed two live, replication-competent VSV-vectored vaccines against SARS-CoV-2: (1) a VSV expressing the S protein of SARS-CoV-2 and (2) a bivalent VSV expressing the S protein of SARS-CoV-2 and the glycoprotein (GP) of EBOV. This protocol describes the methodologies for the design, cloning, rescue, and preparation of these recombinant VSV vaccines.

Keywords: Ervebo; Reverse genetics system; SARS-CoV-2; Spike protein; Vaccine; Vesicular stomatitis virus.

MeSH terms

  • COVID-19 Vaccines*
  • COVID-19* / prevention & control
  • Ebolavirus / immunology
  • Humans
  • Pandemics
  • Spike Glycoprotein, Coronavirus / genetics
  • Vaccine Development
  • Vaccines, Attenuated
  • Vaccines, Synthetic*

Substances

  • COVID-19 Vaccines
  • Spike Glycoprotein, Coronavirus
  • Vaccines, Attenuated
  • Vaccines, Synthetic
  • spike protein, SARS-CoV-2