MMR Vaccine could be enhanced to confer immunity against Covid-19 too, says study
NEW DELHI: A measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine could be enhanced such that it makes one immune to multiple variant strains of the Covid-causing virus, new research in animals suggests. The resulting new vaccine could then confer immunity against measles, mumps and COVID-19, report scientists at The Ohio State University, US, calling it the “MMS” vaccine candidate - for Measles, Mumps and SARS-CoV-2.
In hamsters, antibodies against Covid induced by the MMS vaccine lasted at least four months without any sign of decline, they found.
Thus, the lifelong immunity against measles and mumps that an MMR vaccine confers could likely translate into prolonged protection against Covid in people vaccinated with the MMS, they said in their study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) journal.
The new MMS vaccine, which would be delivered via the nose, is constructed by inserting a highly stable segment of the coronavirus spike protein into the existing MMR vaccine. “The beauty here is we already know the MMR is used in children, so we’re building on a 50-year safety record,” said Jianrong Li, the study’s senior author and a professor of virology at the university.
“We inserted three different spikes that allow broad neutralising antibodies to protect against the different variants of concern of SARS-CoV-2. It’s quite promising, and would be a fantastic new type of vaccine to prevent COVID-19,” said Li.
Further, in mice, the intranasal vaccine was found to protect the tissues lining the nose and lungs from damage and prevent disease symptoms such as weight loss. The hamsters too showed a lack of clinical symptoms, only minor changes to tissue in the airways and undetectable levels of viral particles in the lungs.
In a recent scientific development, researchers have unveiled promising results regarding the immunity conferred by the MMS (measles-mumps-rubella and SARS-CoV-2) vaccine. According to the scientists, this vaccine has demonstrated effectiveness not only against the ancestral SARS-CoV-2 virus but also two of its concerning variants - Delta and Omicron.
Co-first author Yuexiu Zhang, a graduate student in Professor Li’s laboratory, explained that the MMS platform can be readily and rapidly adapted to address new variants such as Arcturus (XBB.1.16) and Eris (EG.5), which are currently in circulation among the human population.
