Human protein nanoparticle-based antiviral vaccine
Dr. Leonard H. Rome, Ph.D., is a Distinguished Professor of Biological Chemistry and Associate Director of the California NanoSystems Institute. He served as the Senior Associate Dean for Research in the School of Medicine from 1997 to 2012. He is interested in studying the functions of novel nano-scale particles called vaults and engineering vaults for a variety of applications, including protein, drug and gene delivery, immunotherapy, vaccine production, etc.
Dr. Leonard Rome, in collaboration with Dr. Otto Yang, developed endogenous human protein nanoparticle-based antiviral vaccine that may be adopted for the design of SARS-CoV-2 vaccine. Their technology includes recombinant vaults containing selected protein regions of viruses fused to the N-terminus for use as preventive or therapeutic vaccines. The scientists used HIV-1 antigen as a proof-of-concept. The administration of vaults containing highly conserved regions of HIV-1 in mice elicited systematic and mucosal polyfunctional T cell responses and therefore potentially useful for a preventive or therapeutic vaccine against HIV-1. Because the vector is a self protein, there is little concern for vector-specific immunity competing with insert-specific immunity (as there is for adenovirus-5, a common cause of the common cold with high seropositivity rates in humans).
Overall, Dr. Leonard Rome’s technology showed highly efficient antigen delivery and safe and potent immunogenic responses. Therefore, this technology may be readily adopted for the design of SARS-CoV-2 vaccine.
Additional Information:
Link to Faculty website: https://www.biolchem.ucla.edu/people/faculty/leonard-h-rome
Link to relevant cases: 2016-299