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CANBERRA, Oct. 9 (Xinhua) – An investigation by Australia’s national scientific agency has found that potential vaccines for COVID-19 would not be affected by the way the virus has mutated.
A study published by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) on Thursday allayed fears that the vaccines would not be effective against multiple strains of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.
According to the study, most of the candidate vaccines have been based on the “D strain” of the virus that was dominant at the time of the pandemic outbreak.
However, since then the virus has evolved into the ‘strain G’ or ‘D614G’ mutation, which now represents 85 percent of the SARS-CoV-2 genomes.
The CSIRO team tested both strains of the virus in the blood of ferrets that had been vaccinated with INO-4800, a candidate vaccine developed by Inovio Pharmaceuticals, and found it to be effective against strains D and G.
“This brings the world one step closer to a safe and effective vaccine to protect people and save lives,” said Larry Marshall, executive director of CSIRO, in a statement.
“Research like this, at high speed, is only possible through deep collaboration with partners both in Australia and around the world.”
The study’s lead author, SS Vasan of the CSIRO Hazardous Pathogens Team, said the findings were good news for hundreds of vaccines being developed around the world.
“Most COVID-19 vaccine candidates target the spike protein of the virus as it binds to ACE2 receptors in our lungs and airways, which are the entry point for infecting cells,” he said. They go.
“Despite this ‘D614G’ mutation in the spike protein, we confirmed through experiments and models that the candidate vaccines are still effective.
“We have also found that strain G is unlikely to require frequent ‘combination vaccines’ when new vaccines need to be developed seasonally to combat circulating strains of virus, such as influenza.” Final product
