The Development of Epitope-Based Recombinant Protein Vaccines against SARS-CoV-2

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to cause infections and deaths, which are attributable to the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant of concern (VOC). Moderna's response to the declining protective efficacies of current SARS-CoV-2 vaccines against Omicron was to develop a bivalent booster vaccine based on the Spike (S) protein from the Wuhan and Omicron BA.4/BA.5 strains. This approach, while commendable, is unfeasible in light of rapidly emerging mutated viral strains. PubMed and Google Scholar were systematically reviewed for peer-reviewed papers up to January 2024. Articles included focused on specific themes such as the clinical history of recombinant protein vaccine development against different diseases, including COVID-19, the production of recombinant protein vaccines using different host expression systems, aspects to consider in recombinant protein vaccine development, and overcoming problems associated with large-scale recombinant protein vaccine production. In silico approaches to identify conserved and immunogenic epitopes could provide broad protection against SARS-CoV-2 VOCs but require validation in animal models. The recombinant protein vaccine development platform has shown a successful history in clinical development. Recombinant protein vaccines incorporating conserved epitopes may utilize a number of expression systems, such as yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae), baculovirus-insect cells (Sf9 cells), and Escherichia coli (E. coli). Current multi-epitope subunit vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 utilizing synthetic peptides are unfeasible for large-scale immunizations. Recombinant protein vaccines based on conserved and immunogenic proteins produced using E. coli offer high production yields, convenient purification, and cost-effective production of large-scale vaccine quantities capable of protecting against the SARS-CoV-2 D614G strain and its VOCs.

Keywords: E. coli; SARS-CoV-2; SARS-CoV-2 VOC; epitopes; omicron; recombinant protein vaccine; subunit vaccines; variants.