Structural Biology and Biochemistry of Coronavirus

National Institute Of Allergy And Infectious Diseases

Investigators

Abstract

Coronaviruses remain both a seasonal health burden and pandemic threat due to the antigenic variation of viral glycoproteins and the ability of animal coronaviruses to cause zoonotic infections in humans. Although conserved epitopes have been identified, there is a fundamental gap in understanding and correlating the disposition of conserved coronavirus epitopes on subunit vaccines and designed nanoparticles with immunogenicity. Lack of such information represents important problems and until they are addressed optimal display of conserved coronavirus epitopes cannot be understood in molecular details. In FY 2023, we established milestones for the expression and purification of structure-based immunogens in order to produce chimeric proteins that carry antigenically conserved epitopes from coronaviruses. These designed chimeric protein antigens will assist in understanding how to optimize the display and immunogenicity of conserved coronavirus epitopes on vaccine platforms. This work is significant and relevant to public health because information on how to increase the elicited protective immune responses to conserved coronavirus epitopes will aid in the development of more efficacious vaccines to different antigenic variants of coronaviruses. This is important because coronaviruses can be both seasonal and pandemic viruses in the human population.