Why efforts to make better, more universal coronavirus vaccines are struggling

There’s a new call from the White House to develop vaccines that might protect against future SARS-CoV-2 mutants or even unknown coronaviruses. “The vaccines we have are terrific, but we can do better than terrific,” Ashish Jha, White House COVID-19 response coordinator, said at a vaccine summit yesterday that gathered researchers, companies, and government officials. “Ultimately, we need vaccines that can protect us no matter what Mother Nature throws at us.” But no specific funding request to Congress was revealed at the summit, or any concrete plans, so vaccine developers and the public shouldn’t expect a second Operation Warp Speed, the U.S. government’s multibillion-dollar crash program to develop the first COVID-19 vaccines. And the scientific, logistical, and regulatory hurdles for any next-generation vaccines are higher. Operation Warp Speed proved it was possible to race from a newly identified virus to safe and effective immunizations in just 11 months—many times faster than ever before. Today, there are a few dozen fledgling efforts to create vaccines that protect against future SARS-CoV-2 mutants or take an even more “pan” approach in order to thwart unknown coronaviruses that have yet to jump into humans. But only a single candidate, developed by the U.S. Army, has made it into a phase 1 clinical trial. “We want to start clinical trials tomorrow, but there are lots of barriers to getting there,” says Yale Univer...
Source: Science of Aging Knowledge Environment - Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research