If vaccine manufacturers focus on targeting new variants of the Covid-19scientists are looking further afield and are looking for a universal coronavirus vaccine that can tackle future strains or even prevent another pandemic.
Un virus mutant
Since the quest for a first anti-Covid vaccine boosted a new generation of serums, a great deal of work has sought to develop pan-coronavirus immunity, with varying levels of ambition. Drew Weissman, of the University of Pennsylvania, one of the pioneers in the messenger RNA technology used by the vaccine Pfizer, leads one of these projects. In his eyes, the adaptation of existing vaccines to all existing strains – Pfizer announced a plan in this direction a few weeks ago – has a major limit: “New variants will appear every three or six months. »
However, following more than two years of trying to infect more and more humans, the virus is beginning to mutate specifically to circumvent the immunity acquired through vaccines – in the same way as the constant mutations of the flu, which require a serum changed every year, he explains. “It complicates things a bit, because now we are fighting head-on with the virus”, sums up Drew Weissman.
A universal vaccine
His team is therefore working on a universal anti-coronavirus vaccine. She tries to find “epitope sequences [déterminant antigénique] very well preserved” – whole virus fragments that cannot easily mutate because the virus would die without them.
Covid-19 is not the first coronavirus to jump from animals to humans in this century: its oldest relative, Sars, killed nearly 800 people in 2002-2004, and Mers-CoV (respiratory syndrome coronavirus from the Middle East) followed in 2012. When the American biotech VBI Vaccines announced its pan-coronavirus project in the early days of the pandemic, in March 2020, it was targeting these three coronaviruses.
If we imagine that each antigen in their vaccine is a primary color, these researchers hope that their vaccine will provide antibodies not only for these colors but also for “the different shades of orange, green and purple found between these colors. “, describes Francisco Diaz-Mitoma, chief medical officer of VBI.
” One step forward “
The tests of vaccine of VBI are promising so far – including on bats and pangolins, and the biotech hopes to start clinical studies in the coming months for results in early 2023.
Another project, using ferritin nanoparticles, led by Barton Haynes, director of the Institute for Human Vaccines at Duke University, UNITED STATES, received funding from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. This vaccine, which targets Sars-like viruses but not a wider range of Mers-like coronaviruses, has been shown to be effective once morest Omicronselon Barton Haynes.
