universal vaccine

Every time a new variant of COVID emerged, it raised an immediate anxiety as to whether the current vaccines would be able to deal with it.  Some did, but not as effectively, because the mutations in the new variant meant that the pathogen was not recognised by the vaccine. Would we have to develop a new vaccine specific to each new variety?

A better way to go would be to develop a universal COVID-19 vaccine. There are two ways of doing this.  The first acknowledges that the spike protein is the most easily recognisable part of the virus to use as the basis for vaccines but it is also the part of the pathogen that is most often mutating. The solution might be to include a wide number of spike proteins in the vaccine in the hope that the immune system will be able to identify as much as possible.  This is a vaccine designed to prevent infection.

The second way is to focus on the parts of the pathogen that stay the same even when the virus mutates.  These are parts of the virus that are critical to its functioning. When the virus enters a cell and begins the infection process, bits of it that are not normally visible begin to appear. At that point antibodies can identify them and bring in T-cells to eliminate the infected cells.   So this kind of vaccine does not prevent infection but can deal with it, turning it into a minor illness.

Work has begun on this.  We were very lucky that vaccines to combat COVID-19 were produced so quickly.  The universal vaccine is at another level of complexity so it is not guaranteed that it can be developed and certainly not that it can be developed at speed.  But it is possible that it may end up being a universal vaccine against all coronaviruses and that would be a wonderful thing.