Here's All About IISc's COVID-19 Vaccine Candidate That Can Protect Against Future Variants

Scientists at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bengaluru have developed a new heat-tolerant COVID-19 vaccine candidate, which claims to offer protection against different strains of SARS-CoV-2, both current and future variants.

The synthetic antigen that can be manufactured as a potential COVID-19 vaccine has been developed by a team led by Raghavan Varadarajan, Professor at the Molecular Biophysics Unit (MBU), IISc.

IISc

How the vaccine candidate was developed

A study published in npj Vaccines showed that the vaccine candidate is effective against all current strains of SARS-CoV-2 and can be quickly adapted for future variants as well.

Professor Varadarajan's team, which has been working on developing a vaccine since the beginning of the pandemic, analysed various proteins found in the virus and selected two parts of SARS-CoV-2's spike protein -- the S2 subunit and the Receptor Binding Domain (RBD).

The S2 subunit is highly conserved -- it mutates much less than the S1 subunit, which is the target of most current vaccines.

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How it works

Scientists have also known that the RBD can provoke a strong immune response in the host. Therefore, the team combined these two components of a hybrid protein called RS2.

The researchers used mammalian cell lines to study the expression of the hybrid protein.

"The protein showed very high levels of expression, and I [initially] thought that the experiment was not working properly," said Nidhi Mittal, PhD student at MBU and first author of the study. This means that it can potentially be produced in large quantities, she added.

How promising is the new vaccine

The team tested the effects of the protein in both mice and hamster models and found that the hybrid protein triggered a strong immune response and provided better protection when compared to vaccines containing the whole spike protein.

AFP/ Representational Image

The RS2 antigen can also be stored at room temperature for a month without the need for cold storage, unlike many vaccines on the market, which require mandatory cold storage. This would make distributing and storing these vaccine candidates much more economical.

How is it future-proof?

According to the team, the vaccine candidate can be tailored to incorporate the RBD region of any new variant of SARS-CoV-2 that might emerge. Its high levels of expression and stability at room temperature can significantly reduce production and distribution costs, making it well-suited for combating COVID-19.

Since 2000, Varadarajan's team has been working on designing several viral vaccines, including those against AIDS and influenza. They have leveraged this expertise to develop their current RS2-based COVID-19 vaccine candidate in collaboration with the startup Mynvax, which was, until recently, incubated at IISc.

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