A collaborative effort from leading global universities has yielded a groundbreaking vaccine designed to guard against multiple coronaviruses, including future strains that may arise. Published in Nature Nanotechnology this past Monday, the study outlines a novel vaccine development strategy termed “proactive vaccinology.” This method involves creating vaccines in anticipation of emerging pathogens and has already shown promising outcomes in animal tests.
Researchers from the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, alongside their counterparts at Caltech in the USA, have crafted a vaccine that educates the immune system to identify and combat eight distinct coronaviruses, including the infamous SARS-CoV-2 responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as others presently found in bats that could potentially transfer to humans.
“We aim to preempt the next viral pandemic by having a vaccine ready in advance,” noted Rory Hills, a PhD candidate at Cambridge’s Department of Pharmacology and the study’s lead author.
Interestingly, the vaccine effectively triggers an immune response against SARS-CoV-1, the virus behind the 2003 SARS outbreak, despite it not being directly included in the vaccine’s composition. Hills explained, “Our vaccine is designed to be preemptively effective against a wide array of coronaviruses, including those yet to be discovered.”
The vaccine’s broad-spectrum efficacy is due to its targeting of specific viral regions that are consistent across several coronavirus strains, which in turn prepares the immune system to fend off various current and future coronaviruses.
The new vaccine is much simpler in design than other broadly protective vaccines currently in development
Professor Mark Howarth, also of Cambridge’s Department of Pharmacology and the study’s senior author, emphasized the proactive aspect of this research. “Instead of waiting for new viruses to appear, we are now able to develop preemptive vaccines based on our current understanding of coronavirus biology and immune responses,” he said. Reflecting on the swift development of effective vaccines during the previous COVID-19 crisis, Howarth mentioned, “Despite rapid vaccine development in the last pandemic, the global impact was devastating. We need to improve this outcome by starting vaccine development earlier.”
This innovative ‘Quartet Nanocage’ vaccine, based on a nanoparticle structure, uses what is described as “protein superglue” to attach chains of viral antigens, training the immune system to target shared viral regions.
The new vaccine is much simpler in design than other broadly protective vaccines currently in development, which the researchers believe should accelerate its route into clinical trials.
The underlying technology that the scientific collaboration has developed also has the potential for use in vaccine development to protect against many other health challenges. It is said to improve on previous work, by the Oxford and Caltech groups, to develop a novel all-in-one vaccine against coronavirus threats.
According to experts, conventional vaccines include a single antigen to train the immune system to target a single specific virus, which may not protect against a diverse range of existing coronaviruses or against pathogens that are newly emerging.