Lassa virus glycoprotein nanoparticles elicit a neutralizing antibody that defines a new site of vulnerability

Abstract

Lassa virus is endemic in large parts of West Africa and causes a hemorrhagic fever. Recent years have seen several serious outbreaks of Lassa fever with high mortality rates. A vaccine to curtail infection is urgently needed. The development of a recombinant protein vaccine has been hampered by the instability of soluble Lassa virus glycoprotein complex (GPC) trimers, which disassemble into monomeric subunits after expression. Here we use two-component protein nanoparticles to stabilize GPC in a trimeric conformation and present twenty prefusion GPC trimers on the surface of an icosahedral nanoparticle. Cryo-EM studies of assembled GPC nanoparticles demonstrated a well-ordered structure and yielded a high-resolution structure of an unliganded GPC. These nanoparticles induced potent humoral immune responses in rabbits and protective immunity against a lethal Lassa virus challenge in guinea pigs. We isolated a neutralizing antibody which was mapped to the putative receptor-binding site, revealing a novel site of vulnerability on GPC.