Cambridge University begins vaccine race to fight all coronaviruses

The University of Cambridge on Wednesday confirmed plans to get started trials of a potential new vaccine not merely against COVID-19 but all coronaviruses that may spill over from animals to humans later on.

The new vaccine candidate, DIOS-CoVax2, uses banks of genetic sequences of most known coronaviruses, including those from bats, believed to be the natural hosts of several relatives of human coronaviruses.

A vaccine that clears all trials may then be delivered pain-free without a needle in to the skin through a spring-powered jet injection.

"Our approach involves 3D computer modelling of the SARS-CoV-2 [Covid-19] virus' structure. It uses information on the virus itself and its relatives SARS, MERS and other coronaviruses carried by animals that threaten to spill-over' to humans again to cause future human epidemics," said Professor Jonathan Heeney, head of the Laboratory of Viral Zoonotics at the University of Cambridge, and founder of DIOSynVax, a Cambridge spin-out company.

"We're looking for chinks in its armour, crucial bits of the virus that we can use to construct the vaccine to direct the immune response in the right direction. Ultimately we try to make a vaccine that will not only protect from SARS-CoV-2, but also other related coronaviruses that may spill over from animals to humans," he said.

Prof Heeney said his team's strategy involves targeting those domains of the virus' structure that are absolutely crucial for docking with a cell, while avoiding the parts that will make things worse.

"What we finish up with is a mimic, a synthetic part of the virus minus those non-essential factors that could trigger a bad immune response," he added.

His team are suffering from libraries of computer-generated antigen structures encoded by synthetic genes that may train the human immune system to target key regions of the virus and also to produce beneficial anti-viral responses.

These immune responses include neutralising antibodies, which block virus infection, and T-cells, which remove virus-infected cells.

This so-called "laser-specific" computer generated approach has the capacity to help avoid the adverse hyper-inflammatory immune responses which can be triggered by recognition of the wrong parts on the coronavirus' surface.

"Most research groups have used established approaches to vaccine development because of the urgent need to tackle the pandemic. Most of us hope the existing clinical trials have a positive outcome, but even successful vaccines will probably have their limitations. They may be unsuitable for vulnerable people, and we have no idea how long their effects will last for, for example," said Dr Rebecca Kinsley, Chief Operating Officer of DIOSynVax and a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Cambridge.

"Our approach" using synthetic DNA to provide custom designed, immune selected vaccine antigens "is revolutionary and is perfect for complex viruses such as for example coronavirus. If successful, it will cause a vaccine that needs to be safe for widespread use and that may be made and distributed at low priced," she said.

DIOS-CoVax2, which hopes to get into human trials by later this year, may be the latest vaccine prospect to be backed by the united kingdom government with 1.9 million pounds in funding within a collaboration between DIOSynVax, which is contributing yet another 400,000 pounds to the trial, the University of Cambridge and the University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust.

The team say their proposed new vaccine could be freeze-dried as a powder and is, therefore, heat stable, and therefore it does not ought to be cold-stored. This makes transport and storage a lot more straightforward, particularly important in low and middle class countries, and it could be delivered through PharmaJet Tropis intradermal Needle-free Injection System, which offers the vaccine in under a 1/10th of a second jet injection.

Professor Saul Faust, Director of the NIHR Southampton Clinical Research Facility, said: "It really is especially exciting that the clinical trial will test giving the vaccine through people's skin utilizing a device without any needles as as well as stable DNA vaccine technology this may be a significant breakthrough in having the capacity to provide a future vaccine to huge numbers of men and women around the world."

The news headlines comes as the University of Oxford revealed that its trials of a potential vaccine against COVID-19 being developed with AstraZeneca could possibly be put before regulators this year if scientists have the ability to gather enough data.

The Oxford vaccine, since it is often known, showed early promise in the first human trial when it produced an immune response, underlining its position as one of the leading applicants in the race to help vaccinate humans against the deadly novel coronavirus.