Development of a rapidly scalable vaccine is still an urgent task to halt the spread of COVID-19. We have demonstrated biodegradable mesoporous silica nanoparticles (BMSNs) as a good drug delivery carrier for tumor therapy. In this study, seven linear B cell epitopes and three CD8⁺ T cell epitopes were screened from the spike (S) glycoprotein of SARS-CoV-2 by computer-based immunoinformatic approaches for vaccine design. A nanoparticle-based candidate vaccine (B/T@BMSNs) against SARS-CoV-2 was rapidly prepared by encapsulating these ten epitope peptides within BMSNs, respectively. BMSNs with potential biodegradability, proved to possess excellent safety in vitro and in vivo, could efficiently deliver epitope peptides into the cytoplasm of RAW264.7 cells. Strong Th1-biased humoral and cellular immunity were induced by B/T@BMSNs in mice and all the 10 selected epitopes were identified as effective antigen epitopes, which could induce robust peptide-specific immune response. The elicited functional antibody could bind to the recombinant S protein and block the binding of the S protein to the ACE-2 receptor. These results demonstrate the potential of a nanoparticles vaccine platform based on BMSNs to rapidly develop peptide-based subunit vaccine candidates against SARS-CoV-2.

中文翻译：

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由可生物降解的介孔二氧化硅纳米粒子递送的针对 SARS-CoV-2 的基于肽的亚基候选疫苗在小鼠中诱导高体液免疫和细胞免疫

开发可快速扩展的疫苗仍然是阻止 COVID-19 传播的紧迫任务。我们已经证明可生物降解的介孔二氧化硅纳米粒子（BMSNs）是一种良好的肿瘤治疗药物递送载体。在这项研究中，通过基于计算机的免疫信息学方法进行疫苗设计，从 SARS-CoV-2 的刺突 (S) 糖蛋白中筛选出七个线性 B 细胞表位和三个 CD8 ⁺ T 细胞表位。通过将这十个表位肽分别封装在 BMSNs 中，快速制备了一种基于纳米颗粒的候选疫苗（B/T@BMSNs），以对抗 SARS-CoV-2。具有潜在生物降解性的 BMSNs，被证明在体外和体内都具有出色的安全性, 可以有效地将表位肽输送到 RAW264.7 细胞的细胞质中。B/T@BMSNs 在小鼠体内诱导了强烈的 Th1 偏向体液免疫和细胞免疫，所有 10 个选定的表位都被鉴定为有效的抗原表位，可以诱导强大的肽特异性免疫反应。引发的功能性抗体可以与重组 S 蛋白结合并阻断 S 蛋白与 ACE-2 受体的结合。这些结果证明了基于 BMSN 的纳米颗粒疫苗平台在快速开发针对 SARS-CoV-2 的基于肽的亚单位疫苗候选者方面的潜力。