Covid, encouraging progress for the "universal vaccine"
Australian researchers are conducting tests on mice to find a mechanism that can neutralize all sorts of variants
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In Australia, "encouraging progress" in the field of studies on the "universal" anti-Covid vaccine, that is, capable of neutralizing any type of variant.
The tests are conducted by researchers from the Immunogenomics Laboratory of the Garvan Institute in Sydney and the Westmead Institute for Medical Research, with the help of a special group of genetically modified mice.
These mice - explained, as reported by the ABC, the Australian research team - were inoculated with carrier proteins as building blocks of a new generation of vaccines resistant to any variant of SARS-CoV-2.
The results - reports the national broadcaster Abc - are about to be submitted for peer reviewed publication. And they show how potential vaccines can be effective in boosting the immune system in patients already infected with Covid and in recovery.
The mice used in the trials are raised in a controlled, pathogen-free environment, so that their immune systems are not triggered by exposure to any other viruses. They are not infected with Covid-19, but are immunized with different transport proteins, obtained from a database of 192,000 different coronaviruses and their mutations. The individual cells are then studied to determine in the laboratory which antibodies the mice produced. "We are using cutting-edge technology," Garvan Institute researcher Deborah Burnett tells national broadcaster ABC.
"If the Covid pandemic had hit five years ago, we wouldn't have been able to get the results we can now," he adds. "We have access to these extraordinary mice that have been genetically engineered to produce full human antibody responses to vaccinations. This gives us the ability to explore things that were previously very difficult to study except in human trials."
Researchers use an algorithm that examines the genetic makeup of a virus and identifies stable portions of SARS-CoV-2, which are essential for its ability to mutate and survive. The algorithm correctly identified regions of the virus that avoid 80% of the mutations found in Alpha, Beta, Delta and Omicron. This suggests that these areas of the virus remain stable across all variants. The working hypothesis is that if a vaccine can stimulate antibodies to attack those proteins, then it can neutralize any mutations that emerge from Covid-19 as well. Current vaccines, on the other hand, work in the opposite direction. They identify Spike proteins that are unique to a particular variant and then deactivate that variant by targeting the specific protein. But when yet a new variant emerges, as Omicron has amply demonstrated, current vaccines are no longer optimal, Burnett explains.
(Unioneonline / lf)
