REGULATION OF MEMORY T CELL TRAFFICKING BY CORE 2 O-GLYCAN SYNTHESIS

The current COVID-19 pandemic is a global health emergency, causing severe respiratory disease requiringhospitalization and even death in a significant proportion of the Human population. Although therapeuticintervention including novel pharmaceuticals or the passive transfer of immune serum from recovered patientscould provide short-term relief in mortality and morbidity, the development of a successful vaccine willultimately be required to prevent the continued spread and seasonal recurrence of this disease within theHuman population. However, very little is known about either the quality of adaptive immune response or theviral antigen targets that are necessary to prevent the infection. Here we propose to evaluate a novelvaccination approach recently developed in my laboratory that we will now apply to SARS-CoV-2. Specifically,we will generate Vaccinia virus (VacV) vectors expressing the SARS-CoV-2 Spike (S) protein that have beenengineered to targeted the S protein for MHC-II presentation. Overall, this study will evaluate whether VacVexpressing SARS-CoV-2 S protein could be a potential vaccine candidate and whether the "immunogenicity" ofthe S protein can be enhanced by targeting the protein for MHC-II presentation.