Scientists from the University of Pittsburgh and Pennsylvania State University have developed a new kind of mRNA vaccine that could help protect people more effectively and affordably from fast-changing viruses like COVID-19 and bird flu.
Their findings, published in the journal npj Vaccines, show that this new vaccine design could make it easier to respond quickly to future outbreaks and provide stronger, longer-lasting protection.
The vaccines currently used to fight COVID-19, like those from Pfizer and Moderna, are based on mRNA technology.
These vaccines work well, but they come with two big problems. First, they require a large amount of mRNA to be effective, which makes them expensive and harder to produce quickly in large amounts.
Second, the viruses they target—such as SARS-CoV-2 (which causes COVID-19)—are constantly mutating. Each time a new variant appears, it can take time to update and roll out a new version of the vaccine.
To solve these problems, the research team developed a new version of the mRNA vaccine using a method called “trans-amplifying” mRNA.
This means the vaccine is split into two parts: one part holds the instructions for making the virus’s antigen (the piece the immune system learns to recognize and fight), and the other part holds instructions for a replicase, a tool that helps make copies of the antigen once it’s inside the body.
The clever part is that the replicase section can be made ahead of time and stored for future use, while the antigen section can be changed quickly when a new variant of the virus appears. This allows faster vaccine updates and production when needed.
The researchers also analyzed the spike proteins—the part of the virus that allows it to enter human cells—across all known versions of SARS-CoV-2.
By looking for shared patterns, they created a “consensus spike protein” that represents the common features of many virus variants. This consensus spike protein was then used in the new vaccine to train the immune system to recognize a wide range of virus types, rather than just one.
When tested in mice, this new vaccine triggered a strong immune response that worked against many different strains of the virus. According to Dr. Suresh Kuchipudi, the senior author of the study, this approach could lead to longer-lasting protection that doesn’t need to be updated as often.
The vaccine also requires about 40 times less mRNA than current mRNA vaccines, which means it could be much cheaper and easier to produce and distribute globally.
The researchers believe this discovery could be useful beyond COVID-19. Many viruses, including bird flu (H5N1), are also made of RNA and change quickly over time. This new vaccine design could help scientists develop better vaccines for these threats as well.
In summary, this study shows that a new mRNA vaccine method—using trans-amplifying technology and a consensus antigen—could solve some of the biggest problems with today’s vaccines. It could make future vaccines cheaper, easier to update, and more effective against a wide variety of virus types, giving us a better chance to stay ahead of the next pandemic.
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The research findings can be found in npj Vaccines.
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