Friday, June 16, 2023

Next-Generation COVID Vaccines

The original COVID vaccines were a medical miracle, but they have become less effective as COVID continues to spread and mutate. Researchers have been looking for ways to create a vaccine that will be resistant to COVID's continuing mutations. 

Here's a long article that summarizes current developments in that search. TL;DR: There's some good news.

 I’ve been reporting on progress of different types of next generation Covid vaccines separately from time to time. With this post, I’m switching to more frequent updates of developments across the next generation board. That includes intranasal and other mucosal vaccines, vaccines targeting more coronaviruses than SARS-CoV-2 – the one that causes Covid-19, as well as vaccines aiming to provide more variant-proof protection against Covid. To catch up on the background, check out the April posts on mucosal vaccines and pancoronavirus vaccines.

Highlights coming in this post: There are positive early clinical trials results for a self-amplifying mRNA vaccine aiming to protect against all SARS-CoV-2 variants, more preclinical results for pancoronavirus vaccines – including an intranasal one – and some information on the US government Project NextGen. Plus, there are now 6 countries that have authorized mucosal Covid vaccines, and there’s some more data from clinical trials.

No comments: