Research teams in the U.S. and the U.K. are reporting progress toward a vaccine for COVID-19, and one doctor at the University of Virginia thinks we could have something this fall. He should know. His lab is working on one of them.
There are three big names in the race to develop a vaccine that protects against the new coronavirus – Oxford University, Johnson and Johnson and Pfizer. At the University of Virginia, a professor of infectious disease explains that those scientists were already working on vaccines for other diseases.
“The group at Oxford was making a malaria vaccine," says Dr. William Petri. "At Johnson and Johnson it was an ebola vaccine that they had developed, and now they were able – just by changing a single protein – to turn that into a COVID-19 vaccine.”
He and five other scientists had been working on a vaccine to treat amoebic dysentery – an infection that damages the intestines.
“The parasite that we’re studying only infects poor children in poor countries," Petri explains. "There is not going to be a huge market for what we’re doing, but if we can learn things that are of general importance to the design of vaccines, the work becomes more important.”
As it happens, the vaccine from his lab causes robust production of antibodies in the gut – lined with a mucosal membrane similar to the lining of our lungs – the first target of the new coronavirus.
“We actually just vaccinated our first mice in the animal model for COVID-19 just a week ago, so we should know – probably by the end of May – how effective this vaccine is.”
Petri doesn’t think his team will be the first to offer a vaccine, but the scientists at UVA could make those early vaccines better.
