Back

A two-dose regimen of Qβ virus-like particle-based vaccines elicit protective antibodies against heroin and fentanyl

Romano, I. G.; Johnson-Weaver, B. T.; Core, S. B.; Jamus, A. N.; Brackeen, M.; Blough, B.; Dey, S.; Huang, Y.; Staats, H. F.; Wetsel, W. C.; Chackerian, B.; Frietze, K. M.

2024-08-29 immunology
10.1101/2024.08.28.608988 bioRxiv
Show abstract

Opioid overdoses and the growing rate of opioid use disorder (OUD) are major public health concerns, particularly in the United States. Current treatment approaches for OUD have failed to slow the growth of the opioid crisis. Opioid vaccines have shown pre-clinical success in targeting multiple different opioid drugs. However, the need for many immunizations can limit their clinical implementation. In this study, we investigate the development of novel opioid vaccines by independently targeting fentanyl and the active metabolites of heroin using a bacteriophage virus-like particle (VLP) vaccine platform. We establish the successful conjugation of haptens to bacteriophage Q{beta} VLPs and demonstrate immunogenicity of Q{beta}-fentanyl, Q{beta}-morphine, and Q{beta}-6-acetylmorphine in animal models after one or two immunizations. We show that in independently or in combination, these vaccines elicit high-titer, high-avidity, and durable antibody responses. Moreover, we reveal their protective capacities against heroin or fentanyl challenge after two immunizations. Overall, these findings establish Q{beta}-VLP conjugated vaccines for heroin and fentanyl as very promising opioid vaccine candidates.

Matching journals

The top 9 journals account for 50% of the predicted probability mass.

50% of probability mass above

"Similar papers" are the closest papers from that journal in the model's embedding space. They show what the match is built on, but the ranking comes mostly from a classifier over the whole training set, not from these examples alone.