ABSTRACT
Safe and effective vaccines are urgently needed to stop the pandemic caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). We constructed a series of live attenuated vaccine candidates by large-scale recoding of the SARS-CoV-2 genome, and assessed their safety and efficacy in Syrian hamsters. Animals were vaccinated with a single dose of the respective recoded virus and challenged 21 days later. Two of the tested viruses did not cause clinical symptoms, but were highly immunogenic and induced strong protective immunity. Attenuated viruses replicated efficiently in the upper but not in the lower airways, causing only mild pulmonary histopathology. After challenge, hamsters developed no signs of disease and rapidly cleared challenge virus: at no time could infectious virus be recovered from the lungs of infected animals. The ease with which attenuated virus candidates can be produced and administered favors their further development as vaccines to combat the ongoing pandemic.
Fuente: Cell Reports
