New vaccine technology could protect from future viruses and variants

Good news! The rapid and astonishing vaccine development during the global Covid-19 pandemic was only the beginning!

I think, it is not to audacious to say that we humans have finally defeated whole classes of viruses. Probably, in 20-30 years from now, many infectious, disease causing viruses are no longer any threat.

"The vaccine antigen technology, developed ... in early 2020, provided protection against all known variants of SARS-CoV-2 – the virus that causes COVID-19 – as well as other major coronaviruses, including those that caused the first SARS epidemic in 2002. ...
DIOSynVax (Digitally Immune Optimised Synthetic Vaccines) uses a combination of computational biology, protein structure, immune optimisation, and synthetic biology to maximise and widen the spectrum of protection that vaccines can provide against global threats including existing and future virus outbreaks. Its vaccine candidates can be deployed in a variety of vaccine delivery and manufacturing platforms. ...

team has been developing a new approach to coronavirus vaccines, by targeting their ‘Achilles heel’. Instead of targeting just the spike proteins on the virus that change to evade our immune system, the ... vaccine targets the critical regions of the virus that it needs to complete its virus life cycle. The team identifies these regions through computer simulations and selecting conserved structurally engineered antigens. “This approach allows us to have a vaccine with a broad effect that viruses will have trouble getting around,” ...

Using this approach, the team identified a unique antigen structure that gave a broad-based immune responses against different Sarbeco coronaviruses, the large group of SARS and SARS-CoV-2 related viruses that occur in nature. The optimised antigen is compatible with all vaccine delivery systems: the team administered it as a DNA immunogen (in collaboration with the University of Regensburg), a weakened version of a virus (Modified Vaccinia Ankara, supported by ProBiogen), and as an mRNA vaccine (in collaboration with Ethris). In all cases, the optimised antigen generated a strong immune response in mice, rabbits and guinea pigs against a range of coronaviruses. Based on a strong safety profile, the "first-in-human" clinical trials are ongoing ... "

From the abstract:

"The threat of spillovers of coronaviruses associated with the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) from animals to humans necessitates vaccines that offer broader protection from sarbecoviruses. By leveraging a viral-genome-informed computational method for selecting immune-optimized and structurally engineered antigens, here we show that a single antigen based on the receptor binding domain of the spike protein of sarbecoviruses elicits broad humoral responses against SARS-CoV-1, SARS-CoV-2, WIV16 and RaTG13 in mice, rabbits and guinea pigs. When administered as a DNA immunogen or by a vector based on a modified vaccinia virus Ankara, the optimized antigen induced vaccine protection from the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 in mice genetically engineered to express angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 and primed by a viral-vector vaccine (AZD1222) against SARS-CoV-2. A vaccine formulation incorporating mRNA coding for the optimized antigen further validated its broad immunogenicity. Vaccines that elicit broad immune responses across subgroups of coronaviruses may counteract the threat of zoonotic spillovers of betacoronaviruses."

New vaccine technology could protect from future viruses and variants | University of Cambridge Studies of a ‘future-proof’ vaccine candidate have shown that just one antigen can be modified to provide a broadly protective immune response in animals. The studies suggest that a single vaccine with combinations of these antigens – a substance that causes the immune system to produce antibodies against it – could protect against an even greater range of current and future coronaviruses.

A computationally designed antigen eliciting broad humoral responses against SARS-CoV-2 and related sarbecoviruses (open access)

Fig. 1: In silico design of antigen candidates.