Recently Dr. Kenney, Dr. Gourapura, and their staff and students collaboratively published a paper in the Journal of Nanobiotechnology entitled: Enhanced mucosal immune responses and reduced viral load in the respiratory tract of ferrets to intranasal lipid nanoparticle-based SARS-CoV-2 proteins and mRNA vaccines.
Pat Boley (Research Associate), Carolyn Lee (MS Student), Jen Schrock (Research Associate), Veeru Patil (Research Associate), Kush Yadav (Ph.D Candidate), Raksha Suresh (MS Student), Dr. Juliette Hanson DVM, Dr. Scott Kenney, and Dr. Aradhya Gourapura all collaborated to develop a SARS-CoV-2 subunit vaccine containing both Spike receptor binding domain (S-RBD) and Nucleocapsid (N) proteins (NP-COVID-Proteins) or their mRNA (NP-COVID-mRNA) and NP-monosodium urate adjuvant. Both the candidate vaccines in intranasal vaccinated aged ferrets substantially reduced the replicating virus in the entire respiratory tract. They concluded that the intranasal NP-COVID-Proteins vaccine induced balanced Th1 and Th2 immune responses in the respiratory tract, while NP-COVID-mRNA vaccine primarily elicited antibody responses.