Protein vaccines articles from across Nature Portfolio

In this study, the authors report a mutation that increases the production of recombinant SARS-CoV-2 Spike and exposure of the RBD. In animal models, a Spike-based vaccine containing the mutation induces strong immunogenicity, provides protection from disease and results in faster tissue viral clearance.

Here the authors describe a stabilization technology that engineers crosslinks between tyrosine sidechains into a natively folded vaccine immunogen and show that immunogenicity is improved in small animal models by locking the most potently neutralizing epitopes.

In this proof-of-concept study, we present a next-generation poxvirus vaccine that features a ‘two-in-one’ immunogen. Our protein vaccine construct, DAM, combines the monkeypox virus antigens A35 and M1, and was produced on the basis of structure-guided design. The DAM subunit vaccine elicited superior antiviral immunity with safety compared to cocktail vaccines or a live vaccinia virus vaccine.

It took roughly 1 year for a COVID-19 vaccine to become available, yet, four decades after the first patient with HIV was described, we do not yet have a vaccine for HIV. Here, Barton Haynes examines the biological reasons why vaccine development for HIV is so exceptionally challenging.