Major
Biological Sciences
Minor(s)
Molecular Neuroscience
Advisor
Chen, Xinyuan
Advisor Department
Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Sciences
Date
5-2022
Keywords
Vaccine; Covid-19; VLP; Pharmacy
Abstract
The SARS-CoV-2 based pandemic has seen almost a million deaths in just the United States according to the CDC. This number is due to the increase of variants of COVID-19, therefore calling a demand in vaccine production. Vaccine adjuvants and carriers have been studied to increase the immunogenicity and safety of a variety of immunizations. Flagellin fused Hepatitis B core (FH) virus like particles (VLP) has been studied to have beneficial effects of TLR5, IL6 levels, and lack of body temperature rise in murine study. The FH platform also provides an improvement from its predecessors FljB alone which is a TLR5 agonist and HBc alone which results in malformation of the VLP. Using this knowledge of the increased immune response FH has as a carrier, it was proposed that it may suit combating the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic we currently face. The spike protein subunit 1 (S1) provides for a potential contender in inducing COVID-19 protection due to its containment of the receptor binding domain. By using the S1 subunit, we aim to construct the expression vector to express the novel VLP vaccine. For the results currently, successful completion of aim 1 and aim 2 for construction of the expression vector through molecular cloning as well as expression and purification of the constructed protein.
Poster
Included in
Other Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences Commons, Pharmaceutics and Drug Design Commons, Pharmacology Commons