The results are in – we’re one step closer to a universal COVID-19 vaccine
November 12, 2024 – –
12 November 2024 – London, UK –The encouraging findings of recent preclinical trials for a novel, broad-spectrum COVID-19 vaccine have now been published in Cell. The vaccine candidate was produced using microbial hosts designed by engineering biology specialist, Ingenza, and shows great potential for aiding pandemic preparedness.
Many COVID-19 vaccines work by presenting fragments of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein – the receptor-binding domain (RBD) – to the body to generate an immune response. However, newly arising SARS-CoV-2 variants are able to evade this response by mutating the changeable regions of their RBDs. This means that existing vaccines may not be as effective at protecting against the disease as they once were.
A consortium comprising Ingenza, Caltech, the University of Oxford and the Centre for Process Innovation therefore initiated a pioneering project to advance Caltech’s original mosaic-8b vaccine candidate, which includes RBDs from SARS-CoV-2 and seven other coronaviruses. The conserved regions of these RBDs should be present and unchanged in other sarbecoviruses, as well as novel variants of SARS-CoV-2 that may emerge in the future.
Ingenza transferred vaccine candidate production from mammalian cells to microbial platforms, enabling reductions in the time and cost required for product development. The company achieved this through its proprietary inGenius™ platform, which was used to design custom Pichia pastoris and Bacillus subtilis strains, plus the associated scalable bioprocesses and analytical methods for the transfer.
The first round of preclinical trials for this revolutionary new vaccine began in 2022 and detailed findings of these studies have now been published, which support the use of the mosaic-8b vaccine as a broad, cross-reactive and long-lasting immunisation strategy against known and undiscovered sarbecoviruses. Read Ingenza’s recent blog for more details on the promising outcomes of these initial trials, and learn about the next steps for this dynamic research project.
About Ingenza: Ingenza is changing the game in product development with its innovative inGenius platform. The platform leverages 12 alternative host systems, customised gene design (codABLE®) and high throughput screening (visABLE®) to develop and optimise bioprocesses for a range of products, from therapeutics to industrial enzymes and consumer goods. By combining DoE and tailored fermentations, the inGenius platform increases predictability to rapidly advance targets to clinical studies and commercialisation. As an engineering biology CRDMO and pipeline accelerator, Ingenza provides fast, efficient and cost-effective solutions to advance your novel targets. Visit: www.ingenza.com.
