The ongoing coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic is caused by a new coronavirus (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus type 2 (SARS-CoV-2)) first reported in Wuhan City, China From there, it has been rapidly spreading to many cities inside and outside China Nowadays, more than 110 million cases with deaths surpassing 2 million have been recorded worldwide, thus representing a major health and economic issues Rapid development of a protective vaccine against COVID-19 is therefore of paramount importance Here, we demonstrated that the recombinantly expressed receptor-binding domain (RBD) of the spike protein can be coupled to immunologically optimized virus-like particles derived from cucumber mosaic virus (CuMVTT) The RBD displayed CuMVTT bound to ACE2, the viral receptor, demonstrating proper folding of RBD Furthermore, a highly repetitive display of the RBD on CuMVTT resulted in a vaccine candidate that induced high levels of specific antibodies in mice, which were able to block binding of the spike protein to ACE2 and potently neutralize SARS-CoV-2 virus in vitro
Development of a Vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 Based on the Receptor-Binding Domain Displayed on Virus-Like Particles