Here’s what four Colorado research teams have learned from working on a coronavirus vaccine – The Colorado Sun

As Colorado slogs into its third month of the coronavirus pandemic, there is new hope around the globe that somebody, somewhere is getting close to developing a vaccine that would make this interminable misery actually terminable.

Multiple vaccine candidates have launched into human trials in the last couple of weeks the most recent being a trial by the drugmaker Pfizer, which on Monday started poking needles into healthy volunteers in New York and Maryland. The White House has picked 14 vaccine candidates for a project it has dubbed Operation Warp Speed, a name that encapsulates the gonzo-scientific, just-crazy-enough-to-work pace at which vaccine development is taking place.

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But, as this research charges furiously ahead, there is also growing skepticism that its going to end well or, at least, soon. Humankind has never successfully produced a vaccine against any type of coronavirus, much less a brand new coronavirus variant. Previous efforts have been shown to cause harm in their test subjects or lost their funding when the virus they were targeting abated.

The reality is that the majority of vaccines will fail, said Dr. Gregg Dean, a veterinarian and professor at Colorado State University who studies viruses. So its really important that we have as many groups as we do with all their different ideas and hopefully one or a couple of different groups will get it right.

Scientists in Deans lab are among at least four teams in Colorado currently working on developing a vaccine against COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. (The virus, itself, is known scientifically as SARS-CoV-2.) In the handful of weeks that they have all been hard at work on the challenge, heres what theyve learned:

There are at least 115 COVID-19 vaccine candidates in development across the world right now.

They all attempt to do the same thing induce the bodys immune system to produce antibodies that can fight off an infection by the coronavirus. But they have different methods for what goes into a dose of vaccine. Some deaden the real-deal virus; some synthesize just a bit of that virus; and some hijack other viruses.

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Typically, the researchers arent starting from scratch. They have been working in vaccine development for years and have quickly pivoted their existing methods to create a vaccine for the coronavirus.

In Colorado, each of the four teams is trying a different approach:

MacNeill said its important to have many different options in vaccine development. Some might work better for some people than others. There are manufacturing, transportation, storage and price concerns to think about.

I think of it all as being complementary to each other, she said. I hope that one of the ones thats really advanced will be the one that helps everybody and makes it go away. But chances are it will be helpful to have multiple vaccine platforms available.

All of the research teams working in Colorado right now agree on something: They probably wont be the first to develop a vaccine ready for widespread use. And, they also agree, thats not a bad thing.

This isnt an arms race, Price said.

Quite often in vaccine development, the frontrunners arent the most ideal. For instance, they may require one or more booster doses. They may need to be refined to create a stronger immune response. And, in the meantime, its important for researchers to understand the vaccines effects.

Let Dean introduce you here to the concept of antibody-dependent enhancement. Sometimes, Dean said, a vaccine can induce the body to produce antibodies that actually help the virus gain entry into human cells.

If you think of a lock-and-key metaphor, viruses contain keys that allow them to unlock human cells. Antibodies grab hold of those keys and block them. But what if another part of that antibody is itself a key that can unlock a cell? Its been a persistent problem in work to develop a vaccine for feline coronavirus, he said.

Its a normal part of the immune system, he said. But in this case, the virus can take advantage of that and use it to sneak into those cells using a different receptor.

So, taking this measured approach, all of the Colorado research teams are still relatively early in the development timeline.

Goodrichs team, which includes veteran infectious disease researcher Dr. Richard Bowen, is about halfway through a 10-week test of its candidate in hamsters. Dean and MacNeill are working to construct their vaccine candidates before moving into tests in animals.

Greffex is the furthest along, with Price saying that his team is about eight to 10 weeks away from entering clinical trials with a target date of completing its work by the end of the year. But Price reiterated the first across the finish line isnt the prize here.

It doesnt matter, he said. Get them all successful and make sure you know how to manufacture them.

Even if the Colorado vaccines arent first heck, even if they turn out not to work each of the research teams say there is still value in the work.

Theres still a lot we dont know about the coronavirus and how the immune system responds to it. That makes every study and every vaccine project currently underway valuable, Goodrich said.

If the problem gets solved before we get to the finish line and I hope it does all of the knowledge that were gaining, all of the experience were gaining is going to be useful when another pandemic arrives, he said. Maybe that knowledge will help us not only respond to the next pandemic but will help us prevent the next pandemic from occurring.

MacNeill said the research being done by one team will help inform the work of other teams. Vaccines could eventually be combined in a single dose to enhance efficacy. And its not just humans who could benefit from a vaccine with evidence growing that some animals can also be infected by SARS-CoV-2.

Maybe my vaccine will never go into people but it will be the one that gets all cats vaccinated, she said.

So, to the big question: Can we actually develop a successful vaccine for COVID-19? Every one of the Colorado researchers says yes.

I honestly believe were still on target, Price said of his companys candidate.

Dean talked about the massive coming together of the scientific community to focus on this one virus. Literally all of the worlds best minds in medicine and biology are currently working on vaccines or treatments to stop the pandemic.

What I see is that scientists are doing everything they can to work together and quickly share information, he said.

Goodrich pointed to promising results from a team at Oxford University that inoculated a half dozen rhesus macaques with their vaccine candidate and then bombarded the monkeys with live coronavirus to no avail.

And MacNeill noted promising research recently published on vaccines for MERS, a respiratory disease caused by a different coronavirus. Somebodys going to figure this out, she said. This is within human capability.

I think that we can get it done and I think we can get it done much more quickly because of what we know from similar coronaviruses, she said. I think, with what we know about the biology of the virus and how it gets into cells, we should be able to stop that.

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Here's what four Colorado research teams have learned from working on a coronavirus vaccine - The Colorado Sun