They were the first to isolate the Sars-CoV2 virus in Italy.
And today from that team comes the good news: "The virus changes up to 100 times less than HIV. This increases the hope of developing effective vaccines."
The announcement was made at the virtual inauguration of the academic year of the UniCamillus University by Maria Rosaria Capobianchi, professor of Molecular Biology and head of the Virology Laboratory of the Spallanzani Institute.
The result emerges from an analysis conducted after the recent publication of Microorganism which had highlighted a change in the virus between the upper and lower respiratory tracts.
"The good news is that Sars-CoV2 has a more stable genome than the one that causes AIDS" and less elusive.
And for this "it is easier to develop vaccines that work".
"Sars-Cov-2, like all RNA viruses, has a fallacious and inaccurate replication enzyme - explained Capobianchi - therefore it has a variability that generates a 'quasi-species' in the organism, a swarm of almost identical viruses but which show small variations between them. It could be a mechanism of evolution and adaptation to the different anatomical sites where the virus replicates. We have seen it both in the lung and in the upper respiratory tract ".
Spallanzani's laboratory was among the first in the world to follow this research approach, demonstrating the 'quasi-species' also in the HIV, hepatitis and influenza viruses.
Capobianchi, based on his analysis, underlined: "On about 10 Covid-19 patients we highlighted the presence of viral quasi-species. In some cases the quasi-species is more variable and in others less, but the genetic variability of SARS -CoV-2 is 10 to 100 times lower than that found in the HIV virus and will not have significant implications for the development of effective vaccines, because the virus is not so elusive as to easily evade the protective immune response as is the case with HIV " .
And he clarified: To date, there is also no evidence that this variability within a single patient is linked to a situation of greater gravity.
Future studies will certainly help to clarify this aspect. "
The researcher also wanted to highlight that the Covid-19 pandemic has also opened up a new vision of science." It is the concept of "One Health -One World "which means that the human being is an element of a system in which animals, microorganisms, the environment and social factors contribute to defining a planetary situation". "In the 14th century - he said - the advance of the epidemic of black plague took 10 years to reach Europe, causing a very high number of victims, around 20-25 million.
Today, in the space of a few weeks, the new epidemic born in China has gone around the world and has reached planetary dimensions. "" The pandemic has shown that health borders do not exist ", he concluded.