Japanese scientists edge closer to developing single vaccine against all coronaviruses - The National

A part of the receptor-binding domain, known as the head region, is highly specialised, but another section, the core region, is by contrast similar in multiple coronaviruses.

To get around this, researchers at Osaka University in Japan genetically engineered the receptor-binding domain of the spike protein to have sugar molecules attached to the head region.

“Given that prior coronavirus epidemics such as Sars-CoV-1 and Mers-CoV [Middle East Respiratory Syndrome] have occurred due to zoonotic coronaviruses crossing the species barrier, the potential for the emergence of similar viruses in the future poses a significant threat to global public health, even in the face of effective vaccines for current viruses,” one researcher involved in the study, Prof Tomohiro Kurosaki, from the WPI Immunology Frontier Research Centre at Osaka University in Japan, said.

Updated vaccines that cope with a wider variety of variants are being developed, but producing them takes time and then people have to be re-vaccinated, so a universal coronavirus vaccine would be preferable.

Because of challenges such as ensuring that immunity is durable and broad enough to cope with emerging diseases, scientists have predicted that it may take several years to develop a universal coronavirus vaccine.

Dr Andrew Freedman, an infectious diseases specialist at Cardiff University in the UK, said while he has not analysed the latest study in mice, it was “probably realistic” to hope that a universal coronavirus vaccine could be developed.