General Discussion on Intellectual Property

The global 2012 MERS-CoV outbreak demonstrated the imminent risk merbecoviruses pose to public health, suggesting that such coronaviruses could follow a similar fate as SARS-CoV-2 in becoming a pandemic-level threat. Therefore, we sought to develop a mosaic nanoparticle vaccine presenting merbecovirus spike receptor binding domains (RBDs) capable of triggering broad immune responses as a countermeasure to future merbecovirus-spillover events. We constructed mosaic-8 nanoparticles co-displaying eight varying merbecovirus receptor binding domains (RBDs) alongside eight homotypic nanoparticles displaying one of each type of the eight RBDs. Immune response data from mice immunization of the mosaic-8 MERS-RBD vaccine (Mosaic-8M) against the eight homotypic nanoparticles and an admixture of those eight will demonstrate whether or not Mosaic-8M is effective at eliciting cross-reactive antibody response against the entire merbecovirus lineage. We will conduct enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISAs) and neutralization assays to characterize and detect antibody specificity and presence in the mice study. Supporting results would suggest that immunization with the mosaic-8 MERS-RBD vaccine could protect against future infection and spillover events involving a broad range of merbecoviruses.