Coronaviruses: Getting to a vaccine as fast as possible
At the German Center for Infection Research (DZIF), researchers are working intensively to make available a vaccine against the dreaded MERS coronavirus as soon as possible. A candidate vaccine has been successfully tested in animal models and now a preparation project for clinical trials in humans is underway.
The discovery of the dangerous novel MERS coronavirus in Saudi Arabia in 2012 has given rise to global concern. The “Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus”, or short MERS-CoV, causes a severe course of disease in infected persons with symptoms ranging from shortness of breath and pneumonia all the way to respiratory failure, which is often fatal. As the number of new cases has increased considerably in the last two months, there has been growing concern that the virus has adapted to human populations and that the risk of human-to-human transmission could increase. Experts consider the source of infection a further risk; it is currently assumed that dromedaries are a natural reservoir for the virus.
“We need to make a vaccine available as soon as possible, so that it can be deployed immediately in the event of a pandemic,” stresses the DZIF researcher Professor Gerd Sutter from the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. The researchers have already taken a big step towards this: A candidate vaccine has been investigated and successfully tested in animal models. It was developed by Sutter’s research team in collaboration with researchers from the Erasmus Medical Center Rotterdam and the Philipps University of Marburg. They are now focussing on testing it for clinical safety as quickly as possible.
The German Center for Infection Research has the required expertise and financial means to quickly make such a trial possible. In the event of a novel virus outbreak, the Thematic Translational Unit “Novel Antiinfectives” has structures in place to enable the rapid development of diagnostic agents, vaccines and therapeutic agents, and to make them available quickly. “The MERS coronavirus case now shows that our concept works and that we are able to react very quickly to epidemic threats with this vaccine project,” Professor Martin Krönke, Chairman of the DZIF Executive Board, explains.
DZIF researchers have also been in involved in the discovery and characterisation of MERS coronaviruses right from the start. Within a very short period of time at the University of Bonn, the DZIF researcher Professor Christian Drosten and his team developed and globally made available a reliable standard test for the MERS coronavirus on the basis of genome sequencing. At the same time, Gerd Sutter and his team of virologists started to develop a candidate vaccine, which is due to go into clinical trials as soon as possible. Drosten and the infectologist Professor Marylyn Addo from the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, who brings along the necessary clinical expertise and will be leading the DZIF phase 1 clinical trial in Hamburg, recently travelled to Saudi Arabia to speak with the local health authorities. Professor Stephan Becker, co-coordinator of the DZIF Thematic Translational Unit “Emerging Infections” sums up: “Our work met with great interest and we will vigorously continue developing our vaccines.”
For the vaccine, the researchers used tried and tested recombinant technologies which also serve as a basis for developing other vaccines. “They have been also shown to be very safe and effective in children and immunocompromised patients,” Addo explains.
Developing the vaccine further until it is approved is not only of great importance for MERS coronaviruses: The DZIF trial is a project with far reaching consequences, as the same method could, in principle, be used to develop candidate vaccines against other pathogens within a short period of time.
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