ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Immunol.

Sec. Vaccines and Molecular Therapeutics

Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2025.1589584

This article is part of the Research TopicNew Insights in Nucleic Acid Approaches for Vaccine and Biologic DeliveryView all 9 articles

Intramuscular DNA Vaccine Provides Protection in Non-Human Primate and Mouse Models of SARS-CoV-2

Provisionally accepted
Subeena SoodSubeena Sood1Ebony GaryEbony Gary2Majed MatarMajed Matar1Jessica KimJessica Kim1Casey E HojeckiCasey E Hojecki2Bryce WarnerBryce Warner3Robert VendramelliRobert Vendramelli3Thang TruongThang Truong3Alanna SmithAlanna Smith1Jennifer RiceJennifer Rice1Jeff SparksJeff Sparks1Michael DeSalvoMichael DeSalvo1John HendersonJohn Henderson1Joseph A RogersJoseph A Rogers1Ankur SharmaAnkur Sharma4Laurent PessaintLaurent Pessaint4Carlo A IavaroneCarlo A Iavarone1Darwyn KobasaDarwyn Kobasa3Jean D BoyerJean D Boyer1Stacy LindborgStacy Lindborg1Khursheed AnwerKhursheed Anwer1*
  • 1Imunon, Inc., Lawrenceville, NJ, United States
  • 2Wistar Institute, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States
  • 3National Microbiology Laboratory, Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC), Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
  • 4BIOQUAL, Inc., Rockville, Maryland, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

Select one of your emails

You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:

Notify me on publication

Please enter your email address:

If you already have an account, please login

You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here

Nucleic acid vaccine approaches have proven successful in the context of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, however challenges with delivery remain. Here we describe PlaCCine, a DNA-based vaccine platform that utilizes a device-and vector-free chemical delivery system. This system includes a DNA plasmid encoding the target antigen and generates robust immune responses, offering significant protection against live viral challenges in both non-human primates and mice.We designed spike plasmid immunogens representing early SARS-CoV-2 strains and found that parental spike PlaCCine vaccination induced SARS-CoV-2 specific cellular and humoral responses in non-human primates and supported significant viral control following challenge. To evaluate immunogenicity and protective efficacy against emerging variants, we further advanced the platform to incorporate the SARS-CoV-2 XBB1.5 variant and observed robust, dose-dependent cellular and humoral responses in mice. When mice were immunized and intranasally challenged with 1×10 5 TCID50 of SARS-CoV-2 XBB1.5 virus, all immunized animals survived the challenge and displayed undetectable lung viral loads. Together these data demonstrate the efficacy of the PlaCCine platform

Keywords: DNA1, vaccine2, primate3, mice4, immunology5, plasmid6, SARS-CoV-27

Received: 07 Mar 2025; Accepted: 09 May 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Sood, Gary, Matar, Kim, Hojecki, Warner, Vendramelli, Truong, Smith, Rice, Sparks, DeSalvo, Henderson, Rogers, Sharma, Pessaint, Iavarone, Kobasa, Boyer, Lindborg and Anwer. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: Khursheed Anwer, Imunon, Inc., Lawrenceville, NJ, United States

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Supplementary Material