MIT’s COVID-19 Vaccine Could Potentially Reach Billions

A team of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology {(MIT) Cambridge, MA, USA} have been generating and testing preclinical materials to push new vaccines for COVID-19 to reach the stage of conducting human trials on a much faster timeline than the many years that vaccine development typically takes. However, the researchers have been working remotely and coordinated with each other from home, via Zoom, phone, and email which should have slowed down the whole development process down. Nevertheless, the researchers obtained preclinical material in a month and are now testing the material’s ability to provoke an immune response in animal models with two lab partners to go on to the next stage of development (a process that typically takes six weeks).

Given the estimated requirement for billions of doses of COVID-19 vaccine, the researchers have also factored cost-effective manufacturing into every development decision. They have invoked a strategy they previously developed under a Grand Challenge for ultra-low cost vaccines to accelerate the readiness of preclinical materials for manufacturing as they advanced the first vaccine candidate toward animal and human trials. With this first vaccine candidate, the MIT researchers have furthered what they aim to be a new paradigm for vaccine development, by continuing to enhance the manufacturing process in parallel to the animal testing taking place. This approach could shorten the time required to transfer their processes to manufacturers who are simultaneously working to prepare to produce those materials in large quantities when ready. By overlapping these stages of development, the whole process becomes streamlined, as manufacturers learn to work with materials, becoming better-prepared to produce vaccines at the scale needed once trials are completed.

The MIT researchers are developing a subunit vaccine, which works by using just a small part of a protein from the virus to train the immune system to recognize the whole virus and stop it from infecting cells. Such vaccines often work by invoking antibodies that can bind and neutralize the virus and give the body a fighting chance to destroy the virus. The advantages of producing a subunit vaccine are that it is easy to make, safe, and, if the right protein is chosen “wisely,” an appropriate protective immune response can be provoked. Their work has provided a fast solution to a first potential vaccine for further testing that also buys time while the team enhances the process and develops more robust vaccines that may produce a stronger immune response. Currently, immunogenicity and formulation studies are underway for their first vaccine candidate, although they continue to work on others.

“To reach the widest number of people, we need to be very intentional about incorporating in aspects of the manufacturability of a vaccine, even at the early stages of discovery,” said Professor J. Christopher Love, the Raymond A. and Helen E. St. Laurent Professor of Chemical Engineering. “Many of the vaccines in development now are likely going to be effective, but some of them may not be affordable in many parts of the world.”

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Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)