Leading scientists call for universal coronavirus vaccine

The prestigious newspaper Science on Thursday, he published an editorial calling for a global effort to develop a universal vaccine against coronavirus that would remain effective against other members of the same family of viruses that could pass on to humans.

Wayne Koff, head of the Human Vaccine Project, and Seth Berkley, who leads the global vaccine alliance Gavi, said that while the COVID-19 pandemic is far from over, humanity now has the tools to end it and is doing it. the fastest immunization campaign in history.

But, they warned, “More virulent and deadly coronaviruses are waiting on the wings. Therefore, the world needs a universal vaccine against the coronavirus.”

SARS-CoV-2 belongs to a diverse group of viruses, of which there are thousands, characterized by their appearance in the form of a crown, which comes from spiny proteins that dot their surfaces.

They are capable of infecting a wide variety of animals, from bats and pangolins to pigs and mink.

Four coronaviruses are known to cause common colds in humans and, historically, they have been considered a low priority for research.

That changed with the SARS-CoV-1 outbreak in 2002, which ended up killing some 8,000 people with a 10 percent death rate.

The Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome (MERS-CoV) coronavirus in 2012 was 34 percent fatal.

Koff and Berkley wrote that there was a risk that SARS-CoV-2 could mutate in order to make current vaccines less effective – as has already been seen with the South African variant – or even become ineffective.

In addition, the potential for other coronaviruses to jump the species barrier is growing.

“Modern agricultural practices, viral evolution and relentless human invasion into the natural environment mean that there is an increasing risk of people finding previously isolated animal populations that harbor new strains with pandemic potential,” they said.

“With human migration, population growth, urbanization, rapid global travel and climate change accelerating spread, it has never been easier for outbreaks to turn into epidemics and turn into pandemics.”

On the other hand, they argued, advances in biomedical research, computer science and engineering have ushered in a new era in vaccine discovery.

High-performance supercomputers can help identify new “antigens” – essential viral proteins that induce immune responses, which vaccines use to train our bodies.

Databases of animal coronavirus genetic sequences can be used to model how they will evolve. And research on how the immune system declines with age can help improve vaccine design.

“This must be a worldwide effort. A roadmap is needed to define the core scientific issues, as well as a framework for financing and sharing information, data and resources, ”said the scientists.

It won’t be easy, they said, but “if we choose to wait for the next coronavirus to appear, it may be too late, as it was with COVID-19”.

© 2021 AFP