How a pan-coronavirus "super vaccine" would work

The main approach taken by research labs is to find people called “elite neutralizers” who have had COVID19 or been vaccinated (or both) but have an incredibly rare and unique response. These are people who can make very potent antibodies (called broad neutralizing antibodies; bnAbs) that bind to parts of the virus well beyond the spike protein—parts of the virus that are present in all of the coronavirus family, remain unchanged despite mutations, and are hidden (“cryptic” epitope sites). These elite neutralizer people are rare, but there’s basically a treasure chest of protection lying within them.

More than 10 scientific groups have found such potent bnAbs. For example, scientists at Duke compared antibodies among a SARS patient and compared it to antibodies among a COVID19 patient. They looked at 1,700 different antibodies in total and found 50 antibodies that were able to bind to many different coronaviruses. The Duke researchers then worked with the UNC-Chapel Hill to test whether these antibodies effectively blocked infections in mice. This science was published in early November and found that these antibodies were very effective. But finding these “elite neutralizers” is half the battle. Then a reverse engineering approach is required to make vaccines that produce the bnAb. After that, the vaccine goes into pre-clinical and clinical trial testing.