A Single Dose of NILV-Based Vaccine Provides Rapid and Durable Protection against Zika Virus

Min Wen Ku (1, 2, 3) , François Anna (1) , Philippe Souque (1) , Stéphane Pêtres (4) , Matthieu Prot (5) , Etienne Simon-Loriere (5) , Pierre Charneau (1, 6) , Maryline Bourgine (1, 6)

1 Virologie moléculaire et Vaccinologie
2 FdV - Ecole Doctorale Frontières du Vivant - Programme Bettencourt
3 Université Paris Diderot, Sorbonne Paris Cité, Paris, France
4 PPR - Plateforme technologique Production et purification de protéines recombinantes – Production and Purification of Recombinant Proteins Technological Platform
5 Génomique évolutive des virus à ARN - Evolutionary genomics of RNA viruses
6 Laboratoire commun Pasteur-TheraVectys

Zika virus, a member of the Flaviviridae family, is primarily transmitted by infected Aedes species mosquitoes. In 2016, Zika infection emerged as a global health emergency for its explosive spread and the remarkable neurological defects in the developing fetus. Development of a safe and effective Zika vaccine remains a high priority owing to the risk of re-emergence and limited understanding of Zika virus epidemiology. We engineered a non-integrating lentiviralvector(NILV)-based Zika vaccine encoding the consensus pre-membrane and envelope glycoprotein of circulating Zika virus strains. We further evaluated the immunogenicity and protective efficacy of this vaccine in both immunocompromised and immunocompetent mouse models. A single immunization in both mouse models elicited a robust neutralizing antibody titer and afforded full protection against Zika challenge as early as 7 days post-immunization. This NILV-based vaccine also induced a long-lasting immunity when immunized mice were challenged 6 months after immunization. Altogether, our NILV Zika vaccine provides a rapid yet durable protection through a single dose of immunization without extra adjuvant formulation. Our data suggest a promising Zika vaccine candidate for an emergency situation, and demonstrate the capacity of lentiviral vector as an efficient vaccine delivery platform.

Keywords: non-integrating lentiviral vector; Zika vaccine

Domains: Life Sciences [q-bio]; Biochemistry, Molecular Biology; Vaccinology

Min Wen Ku, François Anna, Philippe Souque, Stéphane Pêtres, Matthieu Prot, et al.. A Single Dose of NILV-Based Vaccine Provides Rapid and Durable Protection against Zika Virus. Molecular Therapy, 2020, 28 (8), pp.1772-1782. ⟨10.1016/j.ymthe.2020.05.016⟩. ⟨pasteur-02864026⟩