'New vaccine may protect against existing and future strains'

New Delhi: A new experimental COVID-19 vaccine has shown promising results in early animal testing, according to researchers who say the preventive may provide protection against existing and future strains of the novel coronavirus, and cost about USD 1 per dose.

The vaccine developed by researchers, including those from the University of Virginia (UVA) in the US, prevented pigs from being becoming ill with a pig model coronavirus, porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV). PEDV infects pigs, causing diarrhea, vomiting, and high fever, and has been a large burden on pig farmers around the world.

The new vaccine approach might one day open the door to a universal vaccine for coronaviruses, including coronaviruses that previously threatened pandemics or perhaps even coronaviruses that cause some cases of the common cold, the researchers said. According to the researchers, the vaccine offers several advantages that could overcome major obstacles to global vaccination efforts.

It would be easy to store and transport, even in remote areas of the world, and could be produced in mass quantities using existing vaccine-manufacturing factories, they said. "Our new platform offers a new route to rapidly-produce vaccines at very low cost that can be manufactured in existing facilities around the world, which should be particularly helpful for pandemic response," said Steven L. Zeichner from UVA.

Described in the journal PNAS, the vaccine-production platform involves synthesising DNA that directs the production of a piece of the virus which can instruct the immune system to mount a protective immune response against the virus.

"Killed whole-cell vaccines are currently in widespread use to protect against deadly diseases like cholera and pertussis. Factories in many low-to-middle-income countries around the world are making hundreds of millions of doses of those vaccines per year now, for a USD 1 per dose or less," Zeichner said.