{"doi":"10.3390/cells14231928","title":"MERS-CoV RBD-mRNA Presents Better Immunogenicity and Protection than the Spike-mRNA","abstract":"Pathogenic Middle East respiratory syndrome CoV (MERS-CoV), first identified in Saudi Arabia in 2012, continues to pose a threat to public health. The trimeric spike (S) protein of MERS-CoV binds to the cellular receptor through the receptor-binding domain (RBD) in the S1 subunit to initiate virus entry and infection. Therefore, both the S protein and its RBD are targets for the development of MERS-CoV vaccines. Nevertheless, a direct comparison of the immune efficiency of S- and RBD-based MERS-CoV vaccines has not been made. Here, we compared two mRNA vaccines, respectively, targeting the S (S-mRNA) and RBD (RBD-mRNA) of MERS-CoV for their durable immunogenicity, neutralizing activity, and protective efficacy in a mouse model. Both mRNAs encapsulated with lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) maintained strong stability at various temperatures during the detection period. LNP-encapsulated RBD-mRNA elicited significantly higher and more durable antibodies than LNP-encapsulated S-mRNA, maintaining stronger and broadly neutralizing activity against the MERS-CoV original strain, as well as multiple variants containing key mutations within the RBD region. Importantly, RBD-mRNA provided durable protective efficacy against MERS-CoV infection in middle-aged mice, and this protection was associated positively with serum neutralizing antibody titers. Overall, this study identifies RBD-mRNA as an effective vaccine against MERS-CoV, with great potential for further development.","journal":"Cells","year":2025,"id":584157,"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":0,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9565,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2025-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":553824,"name":"Abhishek Kumar Verma","orcid":"0000-0002-6816-2378","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1087423,"name":"Xiaoqing Guan","orcid":"0000-0001-8010-5715","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1497446,"name":"Shengnan Qian","orcid":null,"position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":77538,"name":"Stanley Perlman","orcid":"0000-0003-4213-2354","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":105109,"name":"Lanying Du","orcid":"0000-0001-5955-1294","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":356206,"name":"Qian Liu","orcid":"0000-0001-8525-7961","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":73,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T02:59:11.978098Z","pmid":"41369417","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":[]}