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.

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