Cambridge-Oxford-Caltech project makes vaccine that confers immunity to many coronaviruses, in mice – Cosmos

Preventing the rise of the next coronavirus pandemic or epidemic could depend on creative developments in vaccine technology.

And now a trans-Atlantic research group has developed a vaccine it says trains the bodys immune response against at least 8 known coronaviruses and potentially many more.

Led by Cambridge University with contributions from researchers at Oxford and Caltech, the vaccine includes specific regions of the viral genomes of multiple coronaviruses, as well as many others currently circulating in bats.

Results from the study are published today in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.

But while it primes the body against the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID, the genetic material from the pathogen isnt included in the vaccine.

Instead, among the segments of the 8 other coronaviruses included in the jab are regions that occur in SARS-CoV-2. Its hoped that the product could serve as a broad-spectrum protection against deadly diseases by isolating and including common genetic segments. That includes against viruses that humans havent encountered yet.

Our focus is to create a vaccine that will protect us against the next coronavirus pandemic, and have it ready before the pandemic has even started, says Rory Hills, a graduate pharmacologist from Cambridge, who is the studys lead author.

The Cambridge-led study builds on previous vaccine developments by its partner institutions; one such broad-spectrum coronavirus vaccine built by Oxford and Caltech is due for Phase 1 clinical trials in 2025.

But this new therapy aims to harness the similarities in antigens across several viruses. Antigens stimulate antibody responses in animals and humans.

For its latest work, the group produced a multi-viral Quartet Nanocage from 4 viruses.

These nanocages are protein bundles bound with antigen chains, which provide several targets for the bodys immune system.

They then measured how mice responded, finding vaccine boosts that omitted segments of SARS-CoV-2 still generated an immune response to the virus. In their study, the authors write overall, Quartet Nanocages achieved broad [coronavirus] response. The outcome could be a vaccine product that is quick to make and can progress rapidly to clinical trials, says the studys senior author Mark Howarth, a professor in Cambridges department of pharmacology.

We dont have to wait for new coronaviruses to emerge, Howarth says.

We know enough about coronaviruses, and different immune responses to them, that we can get going with building protective vaccines against unknown coronaviruses now.

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Cambridge-Oxford-Caltech project makes vaccine that confers immunity to many coronaviruses, in mice - Cosmos