The fight against the corona pandemic is ongoing.
So that the world does not immediately plunge into the next crisis, it must be prepared.
Researchers are campaigning for a special vaccine.
La Jolla - Looking to the future: How can further pandemics be prevented?
There is a high probability that the SARS-CoV-2 strain will not be the last new coronavirus.
Even before the current corona pandemic, there were deadly corona viruses - which is why in the spring of last year the "novel corona virus" could still be read everywhere.
For example, the SARS-Cov virus triggered the SARS pandemic in 2002/2003, while MERS-Cov raged in 2012.
The fact that vaccines against SARS-Cov-2 could be discovered at record speed in 2020 is due, among other things, to the fact that a lot was already known about coronaviruses.
In addition, properties of this strain favored vaccine design - especially the spike protein on the virus surface.
But it doesn't always have to be that way.
There are also various mutations that change the virus and make it more dangerous.
There is a risk that the current vaccines will eventually not work as well as they do now.
Pan-coronavirus vaccine: an active ingredient that is supposed to protect against further pandemics
The two researchers Dennis Burton and Eric Topol also point this out.
In an article in the journal
Nature
, they therefore called for
an alternative approach to preparing for pandemics.
Scientists' idea: why not develop a super vaccine that works against all coronaviruses?
"Such pan-virus vaccines could be manufactured and used in advance before the next infection that emerges becomes a pandemic," Burton and Topol write.
To this end, investments must now be made in basic research.
Because mankind has already seen that a virus strain can "cause more deaths than a world war and lead to economic damage running into the billions".
Action instead of reaction is the idea.
"Surely global governments that collectively spend $ 2 trillion a year on defense can find a few hundred million dollars to stop the next pandemic?"
Critics of such pan-virus vaccines point to the difficulties in isolating so-called broadly neutralizing antibodies with sufficient effectiveness that are effective against various strains of related viruses.
The project is very complex.
"It may not always be possible to get the ideal range of answers for an entire family of viruses," responded researchers Burton and Topol in their
Nature
article.
But compromises and new methods could be developed.
There is already progress in this regard in the first steps, also independent of corona viruses.
Vaccine against all coronaviruses?
Researchers present initial approaches
For example, after the SARS outbreak, Maria Elena Bottazzi, a virologist at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, worked with colleagues for years on an active ingredient.
In 2016, when they ran out of money and received
no further support for such a pan-coronavirus vaccine,
according to the
New York Times
, the drug ended up in the freezer.
According to a report by
abc7
, there were considerations to test this vaccine in the fight against the current coronavirus.
And there are other approaches: Kayvon Modjarrad, director of the program for emerging infectious diseases at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, presented a concept at CNN, for example.
And Pamela Bjorkman, a molecular biologist from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), published
a report
with colleagues in the journal
Sciene
about a more detailed experiment with a universal coronavirus vaccine.
(cibo)