Education
What is the concept of a universal coronavirus vaccine?
The world's population is being vaccinated against COVID-19 in many parts of the world, and its success is offering a ray of hope for a way out of the pandemic that has gripped humanity for more than a year.
Despite the remarkable scientific accomplishment of developing COVID-19 vaccines and the pace at which they have been developed and marketed, scientists are looking to create a new vaccine that can provide long-term safety, even against coronaviruses we haven't seen yet.
Researchers, doctors, and pharmaceutical firms all over the world are now working on creating a so-called "universal vaccine," with some even reaching the testing stage.
"We're actually targeting viruses that human beings haven't seen yet. So we have to demonstrate protection for viruses that aren't circulating in humans. And that's a difficult challenge," Kimbell Duncan, CEO of UK-based ConserV Bioscience, which is developing the vaccine, told CGTN Europe.
According to scientists, "the potential is increasing for other coronaviruses to jump species and cause more pandemics."
Wayne Koff, CEO of the Human Vaccines Project, and Seth Berkley, CEO of Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance, wrote in the journal Science that while the COVID-19 vaccine success is impressive, we may not be so fortunate the next time. "More virulent and deadly coronaviruses are waiting in the wings," Koff and Berkley wrote.
They have cautioned of potentially worse effects in the future if humans are confronted by a more virulent and lethal virus than those already seen.A 'universal' vaccine
The answer, according to Koff, Berkeley and others is that "the world needs a universal vaccine."
And indeed, scientists and researchers in several biotech companies around the world are rising to the challenge and tirelessly working on just that. But what does a 'universal' coronavirus vaccine mean, and how would it work?
"A universal vaccine is one that protects against all viruses or strains of viruses within a given virus family," explained Kimbell Duncan.
"For example, with COVID-19, we see variations in specific strains, for example, those coming from Brazil or the UK or South Africa. The objective of a universal vaccine is to protect against all of those strains and anticipate those variations in viruses that would potentially avoid detection using traditional vaccinology techniques," he added.
ConserV Bioscience is one of the European biotech firms working on a commercial universal coronavirus vaccine.
The science behind this vaccine differs from that of the current COVID-19 vaccines. Present vaccines target a particular protein on the virus's surface known as the spike protein. Although this works perfectly well against the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the issue is that this protein mutates on a daily basis, resulting in various strains of the same virus, and may mutate to the point that vaccinations are no longer protective.
For a universal coronavirus vaccine, Duncan says a different approach is needed. "What we aim to do is target the immune response to parts of viral proteins that don't mutate," he said. "We call those conserved regions and the conserved regions are generally found on internal proteins or structural proteins.
"We've identified the conserved regions of viral proteins which we predict are reactive to the immune system – we call those antigens," he continued. "We've taken 12 different regions of coronavirus proteins and formed a cocktail of antigens, and we formulated that in mRNA. We've manufactured the mRNA and we have begun preclinical studies in animals."
ConserV Bioscience has formed a joint venture with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, and they plan to begin phase-one trials in early 2022 once the vaccine has been proven in animals.
Other European companies, including Lyon-based Osivax, are also conducting animal trials for their own universal coronavirus vaccines. They're taking a similar strategy, focusing on the virus's 'nucleocapsid' protein, which is less vulnerable to mutations.
