"Extended dosing" immunization to enhance humoral immunity to next-generation vaccines

Project Summary/Abstract The majority of licensed vaccines are thought to elicit protection mediated by humoral immunity. A key determinant of the specificity and affinity of the antibody response is the germinal center (GC) response elicited by immunization, wherein B cells enter GCs to undergo cyclic rounds of proliferation and somatic hypermutation to evolve higher-affinity antibodies, followed by exit from the GC to become long-lived plasma cells or memory B cells. Effective GC responses are thought to be critical for difficult pathogens such as HIV, and even for easily- neutralized viruses such as SARS-CoV-2, effective and long-lived GC responses are associated with more effective cross-neutralization of viral variants. Hence, optimizing GC responses is fundamental to vaccines broadly. In recent work, we have studied how vaccine kinetics- the temporal pattern of antigen and adjuvant exposure during immunization- impact humoral immunity and GC reaction in particular. Our preliminary studies have revealed that prolonged delivery of antigen to draining lymph nodes over a period of 2-3 weeks substantially alters the immune response. One particularly effective immunization approach, which we term "extended dosing" (ext-dosing) immunization, involves administering a given total dose of vaccine antigen and adjuvant as a half-dozen injections over two weeks in an escalating-dose pattern. Ext-dosing enhances the magnitude of the GC response in both small and large animal models and increases the clonality (number of distinct B cell clones participating in the GC), leading to enhanced neutralizing antibody production. These dramatic effects of ext-dosing vaccination warrant close study to understand how and why this strategy is so effective. As ext-dosing through repeat injections is not practical for human immunization, we are also highly motivated to develop alternate strategies to achieve the same immunologic effects without the need for 6 or more injections. To address these goals, our specific aims are (1) define how antigen exposure kinetics govern the immune response elicited by ext-dosing immunization, (2) determine how adjuvant exposure kinetics impact the immune response in ext-dosing, (3) test strategies to achieve "extended-dosing" effects using bolus subunit vaccine administration, and (4) to evaluate the potential for ext-dosing-like effects in mRNA vaccines. Altogether, these studies will both clarify fundamental concepts underlying effective primary immune responses and develop new translationally-relevant approaches to enhance immune responses elicited by subunit and mRNA vaccines. We test-bed these concepts using clinically-relevant antigens and adjuvants, and aim to pursue strategies we expect to be broadly applicable to vaccines independent of disease target.