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Review
. 2020 Jun 2;16(6):1239-1242.
doi: 10.1080/21645515.2020.1740560. Epub 2020 Apr 16.

Potential for developing a SARS-CoV receptor-binding domain (RBD) recombinant protein as a heterologous human vaccine against coronavirus infectious disease (COVID)-19

Wen-Hsiang Chen  1   2 , Peter J Hotez  1   2   3 , Maria Elena Bottazzi  1   2   3
Affiliations
Review

Potential for developing a SARS-CoV receptor-binding domain (RBD) recombinant protein as a heterologous human vaccine against coronavirus infectious disease (COVID)-19

Wen-Hsiang Chen et al. Hum Vaccin Immunother. .

Abstract

A SARS-CoV receptor-binding domain (RBD) recombinant protein was developed and manufactured under current good manufacturing practices in 2016. The protein, known as RBD219-N1 when formulated on Alhydrogel®, induced high-level neutralizing antibodies and protective immunity with minimal immunopathology in mice after a homologous virus challenge with SARS-CoV (MA15 strain). We examined published evidence in support of whether the SARS-CoV RBD219-N1 could be repurposed as a heterologous vaccine against Coronavirus Infectious Disease (COVID)-19. Our findings include evidence that convalescent serum from SARS-CoV patients can neutralize SARS-CoV-2. Additionally, a review of published studies using monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) raised against SARS-CoV RBD and that neutralizes the SARS-CoV virus in vitro finds that some of these mAbs bind to the receptor-binding motif (RBM) within the RBD, while others bind to domains outside this region within RBD. This information is relevant and supports the possibility of developing a heterologous SARS-CoV RBD vaccine against COVID-19, especially due to the finding that the overall high amino acid similarity (82%) between SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 spike and RBD domains is not reflected in RBM amino acid similarity (59%). However, the high sequence similarity (94%) in the region outside of RBM offers the potential of conserved neutralizing epitopes between both viruses.

Keywords: COVID-19; Heterologous vaccine; SARS; SARS-CoV-2; coronavirus; receptor-binding domain; subunit vaccine.

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Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
(a) Illustration of SARS-CoV RBD subunit S1. (b) Sequence alignment between SARS-CoV RBD219-N1 and SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. The RBM region is circled in green. An example of a neutralizing conformational epitope consisting S343–367, 373–390 and 411–428 (reported by Bian et al.) is circled in blue, indicating neutralizing epitopes do not have to be within RBM.
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