Dr. Modjarrad is one of many scientists who for years have been calling for a different kind of vaccine: one that could work against all coronaviruses. Those calls went largely ignored until Covid-19 demonstrated just how disastrous coronaviruses can be.
Now researchers are starting to develop prototypes of a so-called pancoronavirus vaccine, with some promising, if early, results from experiments on animals. Dr. Eric Topol, a professor of molecular medicine at the Scripps Research Institute in San Diego, thinks scientists should join together in another large-scale vaccine-creation project immediately…
Researchers at VBI vaccines, a Cambridge-based company, took a small step toward a pancoronavirus vaccine last summer. They created virus-like shells studded with spike proteins from the three coronaviruses that caused SARS, MERS and Covid-19.
When the researchers injected this three-spike vaccine into mice, the animals made antibodies that worked against all three coronaviruses. Intriguingly, some of those antibodies could also latch onto a fourth human coronavirus that causes seasonal colds — even though that virus’s spike proteins were not included in the vaccine. The scientists have made this data public but have not yet published it in a scientific journal.
