A vaccine that trains the human immune system to recognize eight types of coronavirus could also protect the vaccinated organism from viruses that we do not yet know about. The vaccine development study was published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology this Monday (6).
“Our focus is to create a vaccine that protects us against the next coronavirus pandemic and that is ready before the pandemic even begins,” says Rory Hills, researcher at the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Cambridge and first author of the study, in a statement.
The novelty was tested on mice and is part of a proactive vaccination strategy, in which vaccines are developed even before the pathogen of possibly pandemic diseases emerges – thus avoiding new pandemics.
“We know enough about coronaviruses and the different immune responses to them that we can start creating protective vaccines against unknown coronaviruses now,” says Mark Howarth, from the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Cambridge and senior author of the research.
The vaccine works through antigens that are linked to nanoparticles, which are injected into the body and train it to target specific regions of the virus. These are regions shared by different coronaviruses, enabling the body to be protected against pathogens not used in the production of the vaccine, as is the case with SARS-CoV-1, which caused the SARS outbreak in 2003.
Developed in a partnership between the University of Oxford, in England, and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), in the United States, the vaccine should enter the first phase of clinical trials in early 2025.
