Australian Scientists Get One Step Closer To Coronavirus Vaccine, Using Virus-Encoded Proteins

With the rising number of cases for the COVID-19 across the world, the need for a vaccine is more crucial than ever. Today the novel coronavirus has infected over 120,000 people and has claimed over 4000 lives -- across 80 countries.

Reuters

Even though there have been reports of many affected people getting cure, they are still in the crosshairs of getting infected once again, if they come in contact with the virus. The only solution apart from maintaining personal hygiene and washing hands regularly will be a vaccine, that will prevent others from getting infected.

And researchers around the world are striving hard to find a solution. However, looks like a bunch of researchers at an Australian biotech company might be on to something.

Biotron -- a biotech company in Australia has a library of small molecule compounds that they¡¯re testing against COVID-19. Their secret sauce is in the design and development of drugs that target virus-encoded proteins dubbed viroporins.

Researchers at Biotron were the first to actually discover that E protein in COVID-19 was actually viroporin. Biotron¡¯s got a library of over 30 compounds with good activity against a range of coronaviruses, including human coronaviruses that cause mild, cold-like symptoms as well as the SARS coronavirus that was responsible for the outbreak of that virus in 2003.

In case you didn¡¯t know, coronaviruses are a large group of viruses that are normally contracted from animals (like civet cats caused SARS in China). Even though the Wuhan Virus originated from the seafood market in the city -- with most of the initial victims being either vendors or buyers at the fish market. Researchers were able to find the virus similar to the ones found in bats and snakes.

Reuters

The compounds with Biotron possess the ability to reduce the levels of coronavirus by 90 - 100 percent in infected cell cultures (previous coronaviruses like SARS, MERS). Importantly, several compounds have broad-spectrum activity against multiple strains of coronaviruses. Testing these effective compounds in several scenarios could help us find a combination that works against the novel coronavirus.

This strong library of compounds is currently helping out Professor SS Vasan of CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization) in Australia who recently successfully mass-produced the novel Coronavirus strain outside China in sufficiently large number to begin clinical trial of medicine.