Effect of mRNA vaccine on Epigenetic and Transcriptomic Profiles of Kupffer Cells (RNA-Seq)

The result show that an mRNA/LNP vaccine induced significant numbers of differentially expressed genes (DEG). The analysis identified 123 DEGs between control PBS and mRNA/LNP vaccinated groups where 23 genes and 100 genes were upregulated and downregulated, respectively, in the mRNA/LNP group. To understand the biological changes from the transcriptomic data, gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) was performed using the whole transcriptome data set. GSEA identified the biological pathways associated with interferon gamma response and protein secretion as the top two ‘Hallmark’ gene sets enriched in OVA mRNA/LNP group, compared to PBS group. The mRNA encoding a model antigen ovalbumin (OVA) were prepared by in vitro translation and the mRNA was formulated with LNP for mRNA delivery. mRNA/LNP was administered via intramuscular route (10 µg per mouse). RNA-seq was performed in total RNA isolated from F4/80+ liver resident macrophages from livers of mice immunized with OVA mRNA/LNP or PBS control.