Novel Vaccine Design Targeting Coronavirus’ Achilles’ Heel Granted US Patent

A scientist from Tel Aviv University {(TAU) Tel Aviv, Israel} has been awarded a patent by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) for his innovative vaccine design for the corona family of viruses. The vaccine targets the novel coronavirus’s Achilles’ heel, its Receptor Binding Motif (RBM), a critical structure that enables the virus to bind to and infect a target cell, and has been developed by TAU’s Prof. Jonathan Gershoni of the School of Molecular Cell Biology and Biotechnology at TAU’s George S. Wise Faculty of Life Sciences.

According to Prof. Gershoni, the vaccine would reconstruct the coronavirus’ RBM, a tiny feature of its “spike” protein. Though the virus uses many different proteins to replicate and invade cells, the “spike” protein is the major surface protein that it uses to bind to a receptor — another protein that acts like a doorway into a human cell. After the spike protein binds to the human cell receptor, the viral membrane fuses with the human cell membrane, allowing the genome of the virus to enter human cells and begin infection.

The spike protein is quite large, containing about 1,200 amino acids. Some researchers have limited their research to a region of the spike known as the receptor binding domain (RBD) that comprises some 200 amino acids. However, the problem is that these relatively large areas have a variety of targets, and the immune system produces antibodies for all of them indiscriminately – reducing the effectiveness of a potential vaccine. The RBM, a highly complex three dimensional structure, is only 50 amino acids long. Prof. Gershoni believes that functionally reconstituting such a structure would be very challenging, but it would be an extremely effective basis of a vaccine.

Prof. Gershoni’s team has completed their initial steps toward reconstituting the new SARS CoV2’s RBM. The reconstitution of the new SARS CoV2’s RBM and its use as a basis for a new vaccine is covered by an additional pending patent application, filed by Ramot, TAU’s technology transfer arm, to the USPTO.

"The smaller the target and the focus of the attack, the greater the effectiveness of the vaccine," said Prof. Gershon. "The virus takes far-reaching measures to hide its RBM from the human immune system, but the best way to 'win the war' is to develop a vaccine that specifically targets the virus’s RBM."

“Our successful isolation and reconstitution of such a functional RBM will allow the industry to incorporate it into a vaccine, which will be produced by a pharmaceutical company. Development of such an RBM-based vaccine should take months and then would need to be tested in Phase 1, 2 and 3 clinical trials which would then take up to a year,” concluded Prof. Gershoni.

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