A team of scientists from Yale recently developed a recent COVID vaccine that gives superior immune protection against omicron variants.
Dubbed Omnivax, the brand new vaccine reportedly increased neutralizing antibody response against the BA.1 and BA.2.12.1 omicron subvariants in pre-immunized mice 19-fold and eight-fold, respectively, when put next with the usual mRNA vaccines.
Details on the improved response against the BA.1 subvariant were published within the journal Nature Communications, while the outcomes of the study involving the BA.2 subvariant were published within the journal Cell Discovery.
“While standard mRNA vaccines still offer protection against infection from recent variants, their effectiveness wanes over time and was compromised as a result of immune escaping mutations in emerging variants. We desired to see if we could develop variant-specific vaccines that supply additional protection against emerging subvariants,” said Sidi Chen, an associate professor of genetics at Yale School of Medicine and senior writer of each studies.
Developed in Chen’s lab by a team headed by postdoctoral associate Zhenhao Fang, the experimental vaccines used engineered lipid nanoparticles to deliver mRNA to cells with “instructions” to create spike proteins from mutating variants. The virus uses the proteins to contaminate cells.
The mutations reportedly blunted the protection of earlier mRNA vaccines developed by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.
Researchers managed to develop the engineered lipid nanoparticle mRNA vaccines quickly. After the BA.1 subvariant emerged in mid-November, the researchers were capable of create a vaccine against the brand new strain by mid-December. But testing for vaccine efficacy was not accomplished until February.
“Although translating the brand new vaccine candidate from bench to bedside requires rigorous testing in human trials, these preclinical studies provide a comprehensive and unbiased evaluation of an omicron-specific vaccine candidate, which can hopefully fuel the event of next-generation COVID vaccines,” Chen said.
With the recent rise of the brand new BA.4 and BA.5 variants, Yale researchers are now at work testing a recent vaccine candidate on mice.
Chen said that while they’ve a system in place able to quickly combating the emerging subvariants, adjustments to the system are needed to reply more promptly to newer health threats.