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Cancer immunotherapy has demonstrated great promise with several checkpoint inhibitors being approved as the first-line therapy for some types of cancer, and new engineered cytokines such as Neo2/15 now being evaluated in many studies. In this work, we designed antibody-cytokine chimera (ACC) scaffolding cytokine mimetics on a full-length tumor-specific antibody. We characterized the pharmacokinetic (PK) and pharmacodynamic (PD) properties of first-generation ACC TA99-Neo2/15, which synergized with DLnano-vaccines to suppress in vivo melanoma proliferation and induced significant systemic cytokine activation. A novel second-generation ACC TA99-HL2-KOA1, with retained IL-2Rβ/γ binding and attenuated but preserved IL-2Rα binding, induced lower systemic cytokine activation with non-inferior protection in murine tumor studies. Transcriptomic analyses demonstrated an upregulation of Type I interferon responsive genes, particularly ISG15, in dendritic cells, macrophages and monocytes following TA99-HL2-KOA1 treatment. Characterization of additional ACCs in combination with cancer vaccines will likely be an important area of research for treating melanoma and other types of cancer., Competing Interests: ZX, DW and DK have a pending patent US.62784318. MW and TS are employees of Inovio Pharmaceuticals and as such receive salary and benefits including ownership of stock and stock options from the company. DW has received grant funding, participates in industry collaborations, has received speaking honoraria, and has received fees for consulting, including serving on scientific review committees. Remunerations received by DW. include direct payments and equity/options. DW also discloses the following associations with commercial partners: Geneos (consultant/advisory board), AstraZeneca (advisory board, speaker), Inovio (board of directors, consultant), Sanofi (advisory board), BBI (advisory board), Pfizer (advisory Board), Flagship (consultant), and Advaccine (consultant). The remaining authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. The authors declare that this study received funding in part by Inovio Pharmaceuticals, SRA 21-04 awarded to DW. The funder had the following involvement in the study: electroporation device used for animal experiments., (Copyright © 2023 Tursi, Xu, Helble, Walker, Liaw, Chokkalingam, Kannan, Wu, Tello-Ruiz, Park, Zhu, Wise, Smith, Majumdar, Kossenkov, Kulp and Weiner.)

Nanoparticle vaccines usually prime stronger immune responses than soluble antigens. Within this class of subunit vaccines, the recent development of computationally designed self-assembling two-component protein nanoparticle scaffolds provides a powerful and versatile platform for displaying multiple copies of one or more antigens. Here we report the generation of three different nanoparticle immunogens displaying 60 copies of p67C, an 80 amino acid polypeptide from a candidate vaccine antigen of Theileria parva , and their immunogenicity in cattle. p67C is a truncation of p67, the major surface protein of the sporozoite stage of T. parva , an apicomplexan parasite that causes an often-fatal bovine disease called East Coast fever (ECF) in sub-Saharan Africa. Compared to I32-19 and I32-28, we found that I53-50 nanoparticle scaffolds displaying p67C had the best biophysical characteristics. p67C-I53-50 also outperformed the other two nanoparticles in stimulating p67C-specific IgG1 and IgG2 antibodies and CD4 + T-cell responses, as well as sporozoite neutralizing capacity. In experimental cattle vaccine trials, p67C-I53-50 induced significant immunity to ECF, suggesting that the I53-50 scaffold is a promising candidate for developing novel nanoparticle vaccines. To our knowledge this is the first application of computationally designed nanoparticles to the development of livestock vaccines., Competing Interests: NK is a co-founder, shareholder, paid consultant, and chair of the scientific advisory board of Icosavax, Inc. EK and BF are employed by Icosavax, Inc. The King lab has received unrelated sponsored research agreements from Pfizer and GSK. The remaining authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2023 Lacasta, Kim, Kepl, Gachogo, Chege, Ojuok, Muriuki, Mwalimu, Touboul, Stiber, Poole, Ndiwa, Fiala, King and Nene.)

Despite the success of vaccination to greatly mitigate or eliminate threat of diseases caused by pathogens, there are still known diseases and emerging pathogens for which the development of successful vaccines against them is inherently difficult. In addition, vaccine development for people with compromised immunity and other pre-existing medical conditions has remained a major challenge. Besides the traditional inactivated or live attenuated, virus-vectored and subunit vaccines, emerging non-viral vaccine technologies, such as viral-like particle and nanoparticle vaccines, DNA/RNA vaccines, and rational vaccine design, offer innovative approaches to address existing challenges of vaccine development. They have also significantly advanced our understanding of vaccine immunology and can guide future vaccine development for many diseases, including rapidly emerging infectious diseases, such as COVID-19, and diseases that have not traditionally been addressed by vaccination, such as cancers and substance abuse. This review provides an integrative discussion of new non-viral vaccine development technologies and their use to address the most fundamental and ongoing challenges of vaccine development., (Copyright © 2020 Brisse, Vrba, Kirk, Liang and Ly.)