Infectious diseases continue to decimate populations and the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has shown us how quickly an emerging virus can spread throughout the world. The health and economic consequences are disastrous with several million deaths, overburdened health systems and the social and economic balance of countries jeopardized. If vaccination proves to be a tool to counter these threats, several points must be improved to be really effective. The speed of vaccine development in the face of an emerging pathogen, its contribution in all regions of the world, its acceptability by the populations and its capacity to break the chains of transmission have not yet been achieved (i.e. mRNA vaccines).
It is therefore urgent to have a vaccine technology that can adapt very quickly to new emerging strains, to bring products with simplified logistics everywhere in the world and to stop transmission chains efficiently.
One of our team’s projects is to exploit the self-assembling properties of a particle composed of 60 adenoviral protein units (Besson et al., 2020). Non-infectious and thermostable, this particle is an extremely interesting tool for the development of a vaccine platform. In a first study in 2019, our team designed a technology to allow the insertion of short linear epitope of Chikungunya virus (ChikV) resulting in the display of 60 copies of this immunogen on the particle surface. A preclinical study, showed a specific immune response directed against ChikV (Vragniau et al., 2019, Patent Fender CNRS).
This approach was then disruptively improved to allow spontaneous display of large antigens (>40 kDa) using a ’Superglue’ system. Easy to use, it is sufficient to add the antigen of interest (viral glycoproteins, tumor antigen, ...) with the ’Superglue’ vaccine platform for the vaccine to be spontaneously assembled. A preclinical study with SARS-CoV-2 showed a neutralizing response from the first injection and a total neutralization of the pathogenic virus after two injections (Chevillard et al., 2022).
Our patented vaccine platform can be customized and has also been evaluated in a study on melanoma immunotherapy in collaboration with the blood bank of Grenoble. By displaying tumor antigens on our particles, we have shown a clinical response leading to control and even rejection of these aggressive tumors (Besson et al., 2022 (Biomedicines) and Besson et al., 2022 (Mol Ther Clin Dvpt)).
Collaborations :
TIMC Grenoble : Dr Dalil Hanani
EFS Grenoble : Dr Caroline Aspord and Dr Laurence Chaperot
Financements :
ANR Flash Covid 2020
Prématuration CNRS 2020
Maturation SATT Linksium 2021
Incubation SATT Linksium 2022.
Communications :
https://patentscope2.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=WO2022218997&_gid=202242
https://www.insb.cnrs.fr/fr/cnrsinfo/une-plateforme-vaccinale-inspiree-de-ladenovirus-lassaut-du-sars-cov-2