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LA JOLLA, Calif .– As new variants of COVID-19 begin to question vaccine effectiveness, two leading scientists call on health agencies to invest in developing vaccines that are globally effective against many variants and strains of potential pandemic viruses.
In a commentary article published in the journal Nature, Dennis Burton, PhD, and Eric Topol, MD, of Scripps Research call on governments to provide significant financial support for the rational design of vaccines based on broadly neutralizing antibodies.
These antibodies offer broad-spectrum potency against viruses, a valuable feature that opens the door to vaccines that could provide immunity against the many variants that could evolve from a rapidly mutating virus. They could also be used as medicine to prevent and treat infections.
Burton and Topol note that the rapid development of effective COVID-19 vaccines has been possible due to certain properties of the SARS-CoV-2 virus – in particular, the spike protein on the surface of the virus. But they warn that the virus causing the next pandemic may not provide such a ready target, which could dramatically slow the process of developing a new vaccine.
“Even SARS-CoV-2 could become more problematic for vaccines due to the emergence of new variants,” they write. “We call for an alternative approach to pandemic preparedness.”
Burton and Topol indicate that broadly neutralizing antibodies are a promising avenue for developing vaccines and therapies that could be easily adapted to newly emerged pandemic viruses or to those that evolve rapidly to elude traditional vaccines.
“Such antibodies could be used as first-line drugs to prevent or treat viruses in a given family, including new lines or strains that have not yet emerged,” he writes. “More importantly, they could be used to design vaccines against many members of a given family of viruses.”
“Breakout-resistant” viruses are of particular concern in future pandemics, meaning that their biological characteristics make them difficult to treat with drugs or to prevent with vaccines. The extreme example of this type of virus is HIV, which can stay in the body for years, hiding from the host’s immune system.
Burton and his colleagues at Scripps Research and other organizations are developing vaccines based on largely neutralizing antibodies in hopes of producing the world’s first truly effective HIV vaccines.
They are also looking to use neutralizing antibodies on a large scale as therapies and vaccines against influenza, another elusive virus and a main competitor for future pandemics.
“Such pan-virus vaccines could be made ahead of time and deployed before the next emerging infection becomes a pandemic,” Burton and Topol write. “We call for investment now in basic research leading to the storage of widely effective vaccines.”
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