{"doi":"10.1002/jmv.28503","title":"A hepatitis B virus core antigen‐based virus‐like particle vaccine expressing SARS‐CoV‐2 B and T cell epitopes induces epitope‐specific humoral and cell‐mediated immune responses but confers limited protection against SARS‐CoV‐2 infection","abstract":"The hepatitis B virus core antigen (HBcAg) tolerates insertion of foreign epitopes and maintains its ability to self-assemble into virus-like particles (VLPs). We constructed a ∆HBcAg-based VLP vaccine expressing three predicted severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) B and T cell epitopes and determined its immunogenicity and protective efficacy. The recombinant ∆HBcAg-SARS-CoV-2 protein was expressed in Escherichia coli, purified, and shown to form VLPs. K18-hACE2 transgenic C57BL/6 mice were immunized intramuscularly with ∆HBcAg VLP control (n = 15) or ∆HBcAg-SARS-CoV-2 VLP vaccine (n = 15). One week after the 2nd booster and before virus challenge, five ∆HBcAg-SARS-CoV-2 vaccinated mice were euthanized to evaluate epitope-specific immune responses. There is a statistically significant increase in epitope-specific Immunoglobulin G (IgG) response, and statistically higher interleukin 6 (IL-6) and monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 (MCP-1) expression levels in ∆HBcAg-SARS-CoV-2 VLP-vaccinated mice compared to ∆HBcAg VLP controls. While not statistically significant, the ∆HBcAg-SARS-CoV-2 VLP mice had numerically more memory CD8+ T-cells, and 3/5 mice also had numerically higher levels of interferon gamma (IFN-γ) and tumor necrosis factor (TNF). After challenge with SARS-CoV-2, ∆HBcAg-SARS-CoV-2 immunized mice had numerically lower viral RNA loads in the lung, and slightly higher survival, but the differences are not statistically significant. These results indicate that the ∆HBcAg-SARS-CoV-2 VLP vaccine elicits epitope-specific humoral and cell-mediated immune responses but they were insufficient against SARS-CoV-2 infection.","journal":"Journal of Medical Virology","year":2023,"id":360071,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":9,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9581,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2023-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":353038,"name":"Harini Sooryanarain","orcid":"0000-0003-1999-3527","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":396609,"name":"C. Lynn Heffron","orcid":null,"position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":628656,"name":"Seth A. Hawks","orcid":"0000-0001-7742-474X","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":499275,"name":"Tanya LeRoith","orcid":"0000-0002-1196-6949","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":419640,"name":"Thomas E. Cecere","orcid":"0000-0001-9558-0615","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":756780,"name":"William B. Stone","orcid":null,"position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":801274,"name":"Debra Walter","orcid":null,"position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":867369,"name":"Hassan M. Mahsoub","orcid":"0000-0002-1350-7172","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":256563,"name":"Bo Wang","orcid":"0000-0002-8560-9071","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":429820,"name":"Debin Tian","orcid":"0000-0002-5897-5519","position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":629534,"name":"Hannah Ivester","orcid":null,"position":11,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":297448,"name":"Irving C. Allen","orcid":"0000-0001-9573-5250","position":12,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":440343,"name":"Albert J. Auguste","orcid":"0000-0001-9048-0041","position":13,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":628659,"name":"Nisha K. Duggal","orcid":"0000-0002-9893-8069","position":14,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1070835,"name":"Chenming Zhang","orcid":"0000-0002-6770-5334","position":15,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":230988,"name":"Xiang‐Jin Meng","orcid":"0000-0002-2739-1334","position":16,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":867370,"name":"Anna Hassebroek","orcid":"0000-0002-7717-9710","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":51,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T01:14:01.896928Z","pmid":"36655751","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}