{"title":"Molecular basis of Ad5-nCoV vaccine-induced immunogenicity","authors":"Dongyang Dong, Yutong Song, Shipo Wu, Busen Wang, Cheng Peng, Weiping Zhang, Weizheng Kong, Zheyuan Zhang, Jingwen Song, Li-Hua Hou, Sai Li","doi":"10.1016/j.str.2025.02.009","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Ad5-nCoV (Convidecia) is listed for emergency use against COVID-19 by the World Health Organization (WHO) and has been globally administered to millions of people. It utilizes human adenovirus 5 (Ad5) replication-incompetent vector to deliver the spike (S) protein gene from various SARS-CoV-2 strains. Despite promising clinical data, the molecular mechanism underlying its high immunogenicity and adverse reactions remain incompletely understood. Here, we primarily applied cryo-electron tomography (cryo-ET), fluorescence microscopy and mass spectrometry to analyze the Ad5-nCoV_Wu and Ad5-nCoV_O vaccine-induced S antigens. These antigens encode the unmodified SARS-CoV-2 Wuhan-Hu-1 S gene and the stabilized Omicron S gene, respectively. Our findings highlight the structural integrity, antigenicity, and dense distribution on cell membrane of the vaccine-induced S proteins. Ad5-nCoV_O induced S proteins exhibit improved stability and reduced syncytia formation among inoculated cells. Our work demonstrates that Ad5-nCoV is a prominent platform for antigen induction and cryo-ET can be a useful technique for vaccine characterization and development.","PeriodicalId":22168,"journal":{"name":"Structure","volume":"6 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.4000,"publicationDate":"2025-03-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Structure","FirstCategoryId":"99","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.str.2025.02.009","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"BIOCHEMISTRY & MOLECULAR BIOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Ad5-nCoV (Convidecia) is listed for emergency use against COVID-19 by the World Health Organization (WHO) and has been globally administered to millions of people. It utilizes human adenovirus 5 (Ad5) replication-incompetent vector to deliver the spike (S) protein gene from various SARS-CoV-2 strains. Despite promising clinical data, the molecular mechanism underlying its high immunogenicity and adverse reactions remain incompletely understood. Here, we primarily applied cryo-electron tomography (cryo-ET), fluorescence microscopy and mass spectrometry to analyze the Ad5-nCoV_Wu and Ad5-nCoV_O vaccine-induced S antigens. These antigens encode the unmodified SARS-CoV-2 Wuhan-Hu-1 S gene and the stabilized Omicron S gene, respectively. Our findings highlight the structural integrity, antigenicity, and dense distribution on cell membrane of the vaccine-induced S proteins. Ad5-nCoV_O induced S proteins exhibit improved stability and reduced syncytia formation among inoculated cells. Our work demonstrates that Ad5-nCoV is a prominent platform for antigen induction and cryo-ET can be a useful technique for vaccine characterization and development.
期刊介绍:
Structure aims to publish papers of exceptional interest in the field of structural biology. The journal strives to be essential reading for structural biologists, as well as biologists and biochemists that are interested in macromolecular structure and function. Structure strongly encourages the submission of manuscripts that present structural and molecular insights into biological function and mechanism. Other reports that address fundamental questions in structural biology, such as structure-based examinations of protein evolution, folding, and/or design, will also be considered. We will consider the application of any method, experimental or computational, at high or low resolution, to conduct structural investigations, as long as the method is appropriate for the biological, functional, and mechanistic question(s) being addressed. Likewise, reports describing single-molecule analysis of biological mechanisms are welcome.
In general, the editors encourage submission of experimental structural studies that are enriched by an analysis of structure-activity relationships and will not consider studies that solely report structural information unless the structure or analysis is of exceptional and broad interest. Studies reporting only homology models, de novo models, or molecular dynamics simulations are also discouraged unless the models are informed by or validated by novel experimental data; rationalization of a large body of existing experimental evidence and making testable predictions based on a model or simulation is often not considered sufficient.