EFFECT OF COVID-19 VACCINE CANDIDATES WITH ADENOVIRUS PLATFORM ON KIDNEY, HEART, AND LIVER OF BALB/C MICE (MUS MUSCULUS)

• Main Author: Almatin Hidayat, Nurhamidah
• Format: Final Project
• Language: Indonesia
• Online Access: https://digilib.itb.ac.id/gdl/view/70935
• Institution: Institut Teknologi Bandung

The SARS-CoV-2 virus was first discovered in Wuhan, China at the end of 2019 which then quickly spread throughout the world and was officially declared as a pandemic on March 12, 2020 by WHO. The increase of COVID-19 positive cases and the emergence of various new variants have triggered various parties to find many efforts for preventing SARS-CoV-2 infection. One of them is the development of vaccine candidates. In order to develop a vaccine, The Red and White Vaccine Research Team of ITB has developed a vaccine candidate with an adenovirus type-5 (Ad5) platform. This study aims to determine the effect of COVID-19 vaccine candidate with adenovirus platform that has been developed by The Red and White Vaccine Research Team of ITB on body temperature, body weight, kidneys, heart, and liver. Balb/C mice consisted of 18 male and 18 female mice with the age of 6 weeks old were divided into 3 groups: 1) Buffer control: mice were injected with elution buffer as an adenovirus solvent after virus purification, 2) Adeno control: mice injected with 3,5x107 IFU of adenovirus that did not express spike, and 3) Adeno Spike: mice were injected with 3,5x107 IFU of adenovirus that expressed spike. The vaccine candidate was injected intramuscularly on day 0. Body temperature and body weight of mice were observed 5 times a week on days 1 to 56 after vaccination. The results of Balb/C mice body temperature were stable, while body weight measurements in the three groups tended to increase. Normality test was performed on the data with Shapiro- Wilk and then analyzed with one way ANOVA, if the data was normally distributed or Kruskal-Wallis if the data was not normally distributed. Balb/C mice were sacrificed, and the kidney, heart, and liver organs were isolated at 56th day after vaccination. The isolated organs were then processed, embedded in parafin, sectioned into slices, and stained with Hematoxylin-Eosin (HE). The results showed that there were mild histological changes observed in the three groups of male and female mice such as inflammation and distorted glomerulus in kidney, inflammation in heart, and inflammation and binucleated in liver. The scoring results of histological changes were statistically analyzed using Kruskal-Wallis which showed p-value > 0.05. From these observations, there were no significant differences in tissue abnormalities between the Buffer Control, Adeno Control, and Adeno Spike groups. As conclusion, the COVID-19 vaccine candidate with adenovirus platform developed by The Red and White Vaccine Research Team of ITB is safe because it does not trigger weight loss and increase body temperature, and it is not toxic to the kidneys, heart, and liver of Balb/C mice.