Immune gene expression analysis indicates the potential of a self-amplifying Covid-19 mRNA vaccine

A great privilege to be one of the lead authors with Eng Eong Ooi, Jenny Low and Eugenia Ong, where we characterised the transcriptional responses in human subjects after a self-amplifying mRNA (sa-mRNA) vaccination.

We found that the strongest correlates for antibody responses were transcripts related to TLR signaling, antigen presentation and complement activation at 1-day post-vaccination. This was in contrast with spike-specific T-cell responses, where transcripts related to T-cell maturation at 7-day post-vaccination was most correlated with T-cell responses.

Interestingly, transcriptomic signatures triggered by sa-mRNA vaccination correlated with those seen in live viral vector vaccines (especially rVSV-EBOV), adjuvanted vaccines, YF17D LAV and other mRNA vaccines.

For more information, users can read the scientific article currently published in npj Vaccines. This work is done in collaboration with Arcturus Therapeutics, Duke-NUS Medical School, Singapore General Hospital and ViREMiCS. For those interested in the raw data, we have made the dataset publicly available in Array Express under E-MTAB-11315