New research by Malaghan's Connor Laboratory, published in PNAS, shows how directing the immune system toward conserved areas of the COVID virus and its many variants using RNA technology could be a significant step toward designing broad-spectrum vaccines.
The strength of vaccines in fighting infections is that an antigen can be presented to the immune system to create highly specific protection. But that specificity can be a double-edged sword. While strong protective immunity can be generated from a single antigen, the protection is only effective as long as that antigen doesn't change—a problem for rapidly mutating viruses like COVID or influenza.
Viruses are incredibly adept at mutating and altering their structure to evade detection by the immune system—a process known as antigenic drift. The current solution is to design new vaccines each year to keep up. While effective, it comes at a significant cost and requires populations to be regularly vaccinated to maintain widespread immunity and prevent outbreaks and pandemics.
"Like many viruses, SARS-CoV-2—the COVID virus—changes frequently with multiple different circulating strains globally," says Dr. Isabelle Montgomerie, a postdoctoral researcher in the Connor Lab. "The virus will mutate away from antibodies that people commonly make, something called immune evasion."
