Pittsburgh scientists develop potential COVID-19 vaccine

A potential vaccine for COVID-19 developed by US scientists has been successfully tested on mice at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

The vaccine was found to produce antibodies in quantities thought to be enough to “neutralise” the deadly virus within two weeks of injection.

Researchers are now to apply to the US Food and Drug Administration for investigation new a drug approval ahead of human clinical trials planned to start in the next few months.

The Pittsburg study, which is the first research on a COVID-19 vaccine candidate would be published after critique from fellow scientists at outside institutions. Since the scientists had already laid the groundwork during earlier epidemics of coronaviruses such as Sars in 2003 and Mers in 2014, they were able to act quickly.

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“These two viruses, which are closely related to [COVID-19], teach us that a particular protein, called a spike protein, is important for inducing immunity against the virus. We knew exactly where to fight this new virus,” said Andrea Gambotto, associate professor of surgery at the Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

“We developed this to build on the original scratch method used to deliver the smallpox vaccine to the skin, but as a high-tech version that is more efficient and reproducible patient to patient,” said study co-author Louis Falo, professor and chair of dermatology. “And it’s actually pretty painless – it feels kind of like Velcro.”

The researchers said their system could be scaled up to produce the protein on an industrial scale.

Hundreds of millions of any COVID-19 vaccine doses will be needed to be produced worldwide.

The vaccine candidate being called PittCoVaccuses lab-made pieces of viral protein to build immunity in the same way as a flu jab.

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Once manufactured, PittCoVacc can sit at room temperature until it is needed, eliminating the need for refrigeration during transport or storage, the researchers said.

“For most vaccines, you don’t need to address scalability to begin with,” Prof Gambotto said. “But when you try to develop a vaccine quickly against a pandemic that’s the first requirement.”

When tested in mice, PittCoVacc generated a surge of antibodies against COVID-19 within two weeks of the microneedle prick.

Testing in patients would “typically require at least a year and probably longer”, Prof Falo said.

But he added: “This particular situation is different from anything we’ve ever seen, so we don’t know how long the clinical development process will take. Recently announced revisions to the normal processes suggest we may be able to advance this faster.”