Scientists are creating a vaccine with potential to protect against future coronaviruses
Scientists have developed a vaccine that has the potential to protect against a wide range of coronaviruses, including variants that aren’t even known yet.
The experimental shot, tested on mice, marks a shift in strategy toward “proactive vaccinology,” in which vaccines are designed and prepared for production before a potential pandemic virus emerges.
The vaccine is made by attaching harmless proteins from different coronaviruses to tiny nanoparticles that are then injected to boost the body’s defenses to fight the viruses should they ever invade.
Because the vaccine trains the immune system to target proteins shared by many different types of coronaviruses, the protection it induces is extremely broad, making it effective against known and unknown viruses in the same family.
“We have shown that a relatively simple vaccine can still provide a widespread response to a range of different viruses,” said Rory Hills, a graduate researcher at the University of Cambridge and first author of the report. “It takes us one step forward toward our goal of creating vaccines before a pandemic has even started.”
Tests in mice showed that the vaccine induced a broad immune response against coronaviruses, including Sars-Cov-1, the pathogen that caused the 2003 Sars outbreak, even though no proteins from that virus were added to the vaccine’s nanoparticles. Details of the work, a collaboration between the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford and the California Institute of Technology, have been published in Nature Nanotechnology.
The universal coronavirus vaccine can be made in existing microbial fermentation facilities, Hills said, adding that the researchers are working with industrial partners on ways to scale up the process. The nanoparticles and viral proteins can be made at different times and in different places and mixed together to produce the vaccine.
Medical regulators do not have procedures in place for proactive vaccinology and the researchers say these need to be worked out with the relevant authorities. If the vaccine were safe and effective in humans, one option would be to use it as a Covid booster, with the added benefit of protecting against other coronaviruses.
More likely, countries will maintain stockpiles of the vaccine and others designed to target individual pathogens once they are manufactured and approved. “In the event that a coronavirus or other pathogen crosses the border, you can have pre-existing vaccine supplies ready and a clear plan to quickly scale up production if necessary,” Hills said.
Professor Mark Howarth, a senior author of the study, said: “Scientists did a great job of quickly producing a highly effective Covid vaccine during the last pandemic, but the world still had a huge crisis with a large number of deaths. We need to figure out how to do better in the future, and a powerful part of that is starting to build the vaccines up front.”