Scientists develop common vaccine for COVID-19, flu and common cold

Scientists have developed a vaccine that can provide protection against multiple coronaviruses and MERS-CoV. This includes those coronaviruses that cause the flu and common cold. The universal vaccine was made at the Scripps Research, and Chi-Huey Wong, a chemistry professor, will present the results of the studies conducted by his team at the ACS Spring 2025 Digital Meeting.

Viruses, such as the one that causes COVID-19, use sugar as a coating to hide from the immune system. The new vaccine targets coronaviruses and the sugars that they use as cover, a news release by the American Chemical Society states.

Researchers targeted an area of a coronavirus spike protein that rarely mutates and found that the vaccine could remove sugar molecules from this region, creating effective and plentiful antibodies to inactivate the virus.

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Talking about the vaccine, Wong said, "It's an effective vaccine that targets more than one coronavirus at a time, which will allow individuals to receive a single shot for protection against multiple infectious agents."

Mutations have led to the need for updated COVID-19 vaccines

Wong added that the "SARS-CoV-2 virus has seen a high rate of mutation, specifically in the receptor binding domain on the virus' spike protein." This has created the need for several COVID-19 vaccine updates. However, the team at Scripps focussed their attention at a "low-mutation region" which it says "is within the stalk region of the virus' spike protein."

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The problem was that this area was covered with "chains of sugar molecules called glycans". This coating prevents the antibodies from recognising the virus, which therefore stops them from inactivating the virus. The researchers devised a "low-sugar" vaccine that removes the protective glycans through enzymatic digestion.

The antibodies that are created specifically target the low-mutation stalk region of the virus's spike protein.

Scientists found that in experiments carried out on mice and hamsters, the vaccine created more diverse antibodies compared to individual vaccines against variants of SARS-CoV, as well as MERS-CoV. The latter is the virus that causes Middle East respiratory syndrome and is transferred to humans from infected dromedary camels.

According to the release, the team is also using the technique to develop vaccines targeting different types of cancers.