Dozens of research groups around the world are racing to create a vaccine for the new coronavirus. Early work looks promising, but experts warn it likely will be more than a year before vaccines are ready for widespread use.
, it was time for a key test. If the vaccine revs up the immune system, the samples in that dish -- blood drawn from immunized mice -- would change color.“Especially at moments like this, everyone crowds around,” said Kizzmekia Corbett, an NIH research fellow leading the vaccine development. When her team sent word of the positive results, “it was absolutely amazing.”
First in line is the Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute in Seattle. It is preparing to test 45 volunteers with different doses of shots co-developed by NIH and Moderna Inc. “I can really genuinely understand everybody’s frustration and maybe even confusion,” said Kate Broderick, Inovio’s research and development chief. “You can do everything as fast as possible, but you can’t circumvent some of these vital processes.”The new coronavirus is studded with a protein aptly named “spike” that lets the virus burrow into human cells. Block that protein, and people won’t get infected. That makes “spike” the target of most vaccine research.
Corbett says the work couldn’t have moved so quickly had it not been for years of behind-the-scenes lab testing of a possible MERS vaccine that works the same way. Regeneron vaccinated mice genetically engineered to make human antibodies. From small blood samples, researchers culled hundreds of different antibodies, and now they’re teasing out which seem most potent against that notorious spike protein, said Christos Kyratsous, Regeneron’s chief of infectious disease research.
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