Funded Projects

Our lab has found that liposomes that incorporate cobalt-porphyrin-phospholipid (CoPoP) are able to bind and stably present his-tagged protein (Shao et al., Nat Chem, 2015), resulting in enhanced vaccine immunogenicity (Huang et al., Nat Nanotechnol, 2018). The ease of use of the CoPoP system was evident during the COVID-19 pandemic, as our group was the first to report in a peer-reviewed journal the enhanced immunogenicity of the SARS-CoV-2 receptor binding domain (RBD) in nanoparticle format (Huang et al,. Adv Mater, 2020). This technology was subsequently been licensed to a S. Korean company, Eubiologics, who have advanced the CoPoP/RBD vaccine through a phase 2 trial and is currently assessing it in phase 3 testing. Our goal for this Blue Sky project will be to develop a novel lipid preparation method in which lipid powders are directly lyophilized without pre-formation of aqueous liposomes, which is a difficult process to scale-up. We have preliminary data in hand that this is feasible with the addition of a small amount of surfactant into the lyophilization solvent. Following development of such a methodology, RBDs of SARS-CoV-2 variants will be assessed for conversion from soluble to particle-bound format and will be assessed for enhanced functional immunogenicity relative to RBD-display on conventional pre-formed aqueous liposomes.