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In the United Kingdom, scientists at the University of Cambridge are working on developing a vaccine against all types of coronaviruses (CoVs). This applies to the already known pathogens of this viral family, such as the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (which causes Covid-19) and MERS-CoV (MERS), and also to those that have not yet been identified by science.
The proposal is to create a universal vaccine against coronaviruses, a group with a high capacity to cause outbreaks and pandemics. For now, the British proposal appears to be promising, as the vaccine worked in pre-clinical tests on animals, generating antibodies in mice.
“Our focus is to create a vaccine that protects us against the next coronavirus pandemic and to prepare it before the pandemic even begins,” explains Rory Hills, a researcher in Cambridge’s department of pharmacology and one of the study’s authors, in a note. Furthermore, the immunizer must protect against “those we don’t even know yet”, the scientist bets.
In this scenario, the universal coronavirus vaccine could be an answer against disease X, a term created by the World Health Organization (WHO) to define the next virus, bacteria or even fungus that will be capable of triggering a global pandemic,
Vaccine against all coronaviruses
If a completely new virus appeared in the world, without any distant “cousin”, science would hardly be able to develop a vaccine, after much study. However, the situation is different when analyzing coronaviruses. Long before the Covid-19 pandemic, researchers were already investigating CoVs.
“We don’t need to wait for new coronaviruses to emerge. We know enough about coronaviruses and the different immune responses to them that we can start building protective vaccines against unknown coronaviruses now”, points out Mark Howarth, professor at Cambridge and another author of the study.
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How does the universal coronavirus vaccine work?
To understand, the objective of the immunizing potential is to sensitize the immune system against eight different types of coronaviruses, such as SARS-CoV-1, SARS-CoV-2 and other coronaviruses that have so far been found only in bats — there are always any possibility of them escaping and contaminating other animals or humans.
The vaccine is comprehensive because it was not developed from specific points of a single coronavirus. The researchers looked for more generic structures identified in different types of coronavirus and which, perhaps, may exist in those still unknown as well.
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Being very specific, the formula took advantage of points known as Receptor Binding Domains (RBDs), present in the membrane of coronaviruses. These fragments (antigens) were taken from four different CoVs, including the first known strain of the covid-19 virus.
To compare, conventional vaccines include a single antigen to train the immune system, which is typically effective considering they need to protect against a single virus.
In preclinical tests, the new universal coronavirus vaccine managed to protect rodents against SARS-CoV-1. This occurred without the need for the formula to have a specific antigen for this CoV, as stated in an article published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.
Other research teams have already tried to develop a universal vaccine against coronaviruses, but were unsuccessful. This is the case of researchers at the University of Oxford. Despite the failed attempt, part of the knowledge obtained was useful in this research.
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Source: Nature Nanotechnology and University of Cambridge
