Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2020 Aug 10;38(36):5793-5802.
doi: 10.1016/j.vaccine.2020.06.062. Epub 2020 Jul 20.

Immunogenicity generated by mRNA vaccine encoding VZV gE antigen is comparable to adjuvanted subunit vaccine and better than live attenuated vaccine in nonhuman primates

Morgan A Monslow  1 , Sayda Elbashir  2 , Nicole L Sullivan  3 , David S Thiriot  3 , Patrick Ahl  3 , Jeff Smith  3 , Elise Miller  3 , James Cook  3 , Scott Cosmi  4 , Elizabeth Thoryk  3 , Michael Citron  3 , Nithya Thambi  3 , Christine Shaw  2 , Daria Hazuda  3 , Kalpit A Vora  5
Affiliations

Immunogenicity generated by mRNA vaccine encoding VZV gE antigen is comparable to adjuvanted subunit vaccine and better than live attenuated vaccine in nonhuman primates

Morgan A Monslow et al. Vaccine. .

Abstract

Shingles is a painful, blistering rash caused by reactivation of latent varicella-zoster virus (VZV) and most frequently occurs in elderly and immunocompromised individuals. Currently, two approved vaccines for the prevention of shingles are on the market, a live attenuated virus vaccine ZOSTAVAX® (Merck & Co., Inc., Kenilworth, NJ, USA) and an AS01B adjuvanted subunit protein vaccine Shingrix™ (Glaxo Smith Kline, Rockville, MD, USA). Human clinical immunogenicity and vaccine efficacy data is available for these two benchmark vaccines, offering a unique opportunity for comparative analyses with novel vaccine platforms and animal model translatability studies. The studies presented here utilized non-human primates (NHP) to evaluate humoral and cellular immune response by three vaccine modalities: the new platform of lipid nanoparticle (LNP) formulated mRNA encoding VZV gE antigen (VZV gE mRNA/LNP) as compared with well-established platforms of live attenuated VZV (VZV LAV) and adjuvanted VZV gE subunit protein (VZV gE protein/adjuvant). The magnitude of response to vaccination with a single 100-200 μg mRNA dose or two 50 μg mRNA doses of VZV gE mRNA/LNP were comparable to two 50 μg protein doses of VZV gE protein/adjuvant, suggesting the VZV gE mRNA/LNP platform has the potential to elicit a robust immune response, and both modalities generated markedly higher responses than VZV LAV. Additionally, the slopes of decay for VZV-specific antibody titers were roughly similar across all three vaccines, indicating the magnitude of peak immunogenicity was the driving force in determining immune response longevity. Finally, vaccine-induced immunogenicity with VZV LAV and VZV gE protein/adjuvant in NHP closely resembled human clinical trials immune response data for ZOSTAVAX® and Shingrix™, helping to validate NHP as an appropriate preclinical model for evaluating these vaccines.

Keywords: Adjuvanted subunit protein; Cellular and humoral immunity; Immune response durability; Live attenuate virus; Vaccine; Varicella-zoster virus; mRNA encoding antigen.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of Competing Interest All authors are employees of Merck Sharp & Dohme Corp., a subsidiary of Merck & Co., Inc., Kenilworth, NJ, USA, Moderna, Cambridge, MA, USA, and Eurofins Lancaster Laboratories Professional Scientific Services, Lancaster, PA, USA.

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

LinkOut - more resources