A vaccine for lots of coronavirus could be in your future

The Duke team was working on an HIV vaccine when the pandemic broke out in late 2019. They quickly shifted their focus. While big pharma mobilized tens of billions of dollars in research & development funding—much of it provided by the U.S. government—to produce a wide array of vaccines to address SARS-CoV-2, Haynes and Saunders and their teammates set their sights on the viruses that might come after that pathogen. Major new variants or entirely new coronaviruses. SARS-CoV-3, if you will. What they decided early on was that they needed a really powerful coronavirus antibody with what Haynes described as “broadly neutralizing” qualities. After inspecting 2,000 different antibodies, they found what they were looking for in an 18-year-old sample from someone who caught, and recovered from, SARS-CoV-1—an older cousin of SARS-CoV-2 that fueled its own pandemic back in 2003. That antibody, which the Duke team calls “DH1047,” targets the spike protein that coronaviruses use to attach to and infect our cells.
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