Coronavirus mutations can have very unpredictable ways of evolving in the future, and although the ongoing pandemic will end at some point, there’s no telling when another one could emerge and become even more dangerous. But thanks to researchers from Duke University, a universal coronavirus vaccine is under development that aims to protect us against a huge variety of virus infections that move from animals to humans.
Whether we’re talking about coronaviruses from the present or those from the future, the vaccine in progress aims to deal with them all. Today.duke.edu brings the big news, and the new vaccine is called a pan-coronavirus vaccine. The vaccine has already shown great potential.
One hundred percent effective on primates
The pan-coronavirus vaccine has been one hundred percent effective during tests in primates and other animals. Although it wasn’t tested on humans yet, success in primates also means that the vaccine has high chances of success when it comes to us humans.
Kevin Saunders, who’s director of research at Duke Human Vaccine Institute, declared:
What this vaccine does, it takes a small part of the virus, the part of the virus that attaches to the cells, and it presents multiple copies of that to the immune system. That allows the immune system to focus a response against that part of the virus, preventing the virus from being able to attach to cells, and hopefully preventing subsequent infection.
He also added:
What we found in this study is that we got antibodies — this is the part of the immune system that can attach to viruses and prevent infection — we got that part of the immune system stimulated such that it was able to bind to not only SARS-CoV-2, but also to coronaviruses that circulate in animals.
The full article, as well as other important statements regarding the vaccine, can be seen at today.duke.edu.
