Engineering of the PapMV vaccine platform with a shortened M2e peptide leads to an effective one dose influenza vaccine

Abstract The emergence of highly virulent influenza strains and the risks of pandemics as well as the limited efficiency of the current seasonal vaccines are important public health concerns. There is a major need for new influenza vaccines that would be broadly cross-protective. The ectodomain of matrix protein 2 (M2e) is highly conserved amongst different influenza strains and could be used as a broad spectrum antigen. To overcome its low immunogenicity we have fused a short peptide epitope derived from the human consensus sequence of M2e (amino acids 6–14, EVETPIRNE) to the N-terminus of papaya mosaic virus coat protein. The fusion harboring coat proteins were assembled around a single stranded RNA into virus-like particles (PapMV-sM2e). The resulting PapMV-sM2e rod-shaped particle was stable and indistinguishable from regular PapMV particles. A single intramuscular immunization with PapMV-sM2e was sufficient to mount appreciable levels of CD4 dependent M2e specific total IgG and IgG2a antibody in mice sera. PapMV-sM2e proved to be self-adjuvanting since the addition of PapMV as an exogenous adjuvant did not result in significantly improved antibody titers. In addition, we confirmed the adjuvant property of PapMV-sM2e using the trivalent inactivated flu vaccine as antigen and demonstrated that the newly engineered nanoparticles areas efficacious as an adjuvant than the original PapMV nanoparticles. Upon infection with a sub-lethal dose of influenza, PapMV-sM2e vaccinated animals were completely protected from virus induced morbidity and mortality. Mice immunized with decreasing amounts of PapMV-sM2e and challenged with a more stringent dose of influenza virus displayed dose-dependent levels of protection. Seventy percent of the mice immunized once with the highest dose of PapMV-sM2e survived the challenged. The survival of the mice correlated mainly with the levels of anti-M2e IgG2a antibodies obtained before the infection. These results demonstrate that PapMV-sM2e can be an important component of a broadly cross-reactive influenza vaccine.