Scientists work on a vaccine against all coronaviruses

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Scientists from San Diego to Boston are rushing to make that possibility a reality, and they have just received some important help. On Thursday, the La Jolla Institute for Immunology announced that Erica Ollmann Saphire, president of the organization, won a three-year, $ 2.6 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to develop a so-called pancoronavirus vaccine.

“It is a class of virus that we know can cause global pandemics. And it’s something we have to be prepared for, ”Saphire said. “We are trying to avoid the next pandemic.”

It is part of a larger effort led by Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and joined by researchers from MIT, Massachusetts General Hospital and Boston University. Boston scientists are studying people who have been vaccinated or recovered from COVID-19, looking for immune responses with the potential to fight a wide swath of coronaviruses.

For this strategy to work, researchers must identify the parts of the viral surface that do not change from one coronavirus to another and train the immune system to target these shared regions. Saphire’s team will design the vaccine itself. His group has figured out how to make a version of the coronavirus spike protein – the protein that attaches itself to cells and allows the virus to slide inside them – that faithfully mimics the shape of the real virus spike.

This is key because, for protein, shape is everything. The millions of proteins in each cell fold into intricate three-dimensional structures, a bit like works of origami. Those forms control what each protein does, and even slight changes affect how it works.

“If the protein is better structured, better folded and more stable, it will stay longer and stimulate the immune system for longer,” explains Saphire.

The full grant lasts for five years, with additional funding coming in the fourth year. By then, Saphire hopes to have a clearer idea of ​​how a pancoronavirus vaccine should be given. That means knowing how many doses people need, how far apart injections should be spaced, and whether the vaccine should use protein, RNA (like Pfizer and Moderna injections), or some other approach to elicit immunity.

Many other researchers pursue the same goal. Just a 10-minute drive from Saphire’s lab, Scripps Research scientists are also working on a coronavirus vaccine in collaboration with the Gates Foundation. Immunologist Dennis Burton is one of them, and he is employing the same strategy his team has used to study HIV for decades, closely examining antibody responses for clues on how to reverse engineer a vaccine that could elicit comprehensive and long-lasting protection.

Burton believes that a vaccine that really works against all coronaviruses will be a difficult task, and Saphire agrees. But he says a vaccine against the viruses responsible for SARS and COVID-19 is more feasible, given that researchers have already found some antibodies in people that adhere to the viruses responsible for both diseases. There is also evidence that previous exposure to the four seasonal coronaviruses that can cause the common cold helps against COVID-19, suggesting that a vaccine against these viruses and the new coronavirus is also possible.

“The degree of viability depends on the breadth of the vaccine and the amount of virus that is intended,” says Burton. “It’s about seeing how far you can go.”

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