Scientists from a global consortium developing a vaccine that can counter diverse variants of Covid-19 will receive additional funding from the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) to begin work on whether the vaccine will be effective against other deadly coronaviruses.

The International Vaccine Institute (IVI), an international organization headquartered in Korea, said Thursday that it would lead a new research project by modifying the design of mRNA vaccine candidates. These candidates have already been initially evaluated against Omicron, Delta, and Alpha variants with funding from CEPI and others to test whether they can effectively protect against other viruses associated with Covid-19.

Coronaviruses are responsible for some of the deadliest infectious diseases in recent decades. SARS spread across multiple countries from 2002 to 2004. Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), first identified in 2012, infected thousands of people in the Middle East, and the Covid-19 pandemic continues to cause suffering worldwide.

In anticipation of the possibility of another severe coronavirus outbreak, the IVI-led research team has been expanding the structure of its Covid-19 variant vaccine to include mRNA molecules that match the spike proteins of several known or modified coronaviruses.

The researchers hypothesized that presenting spike proteins (known as immunogens) from multiple high-risk coronaviruses to the human body could induce high levels of broadly protective antibodies (a form of immune response). Preclinical data from this vaccine design approach has shown that it can induce immune responses that neutralize multiple coronaviruses, including viruses found in pangolins and bats. The vaccine can provide protection against existing and emerging Covid-19 viruses, as well as new or as-yet-undiscovered SARS-related coronaviruses that can spread from animal hosts to humans.

"The creation of a single vaccine that can target multiple coronavirus members at the same time would be an important step forward within coronavirus preparedness efforts," said Dr. Yoon In-kyu, CEPI's acting executive director of vaccine research and development at CEPI. “It has the potential to shorten the time and money spent continually updating vaccine formulations when new coronavirus variants emerge. This project is one of 13 broadly protective coronavirus vaccine candidates CEPI has supported.”

CEPI first invested in the vaccine in 2022 and will continue to support the project through preclinical and phase 2 trials with additional funding. This will bring CEPI's total investment in the project to a maximum of $23.9 million (32.4 billion won).

BioNet, a French-Thai vaccine manufacturer, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of North Carolina, the University of California, Davis, and Chulalongkorn University in Thailand are collaborating with IVI on this study.

The vaccine candidates being tested by the consortium are based on an mRNA platform, a rapid response technology first validated during the Covid-19 pandemic. Given its speed and flexibility, mRNA is a key enabler for rapidly responding to future outbreaks of emerging infectious diseases, such as known and novel coronaviruses.

“In a world where novel viruses emerge and then quickly evolve with devastating consequences, the science must keep up and respond,” IVI Director General Jerome Kim said. “The discovery of the mRNA vaccine platform significantly shortened the acute phase of the Covid-19 pandemic, and the flexibility of this new technology opened the door to a new generation of agile and potentially broadly protective vaccines. IVI is thrilled to lead this research consortium in pursuit of an innovative mRNA vaccine that protects against not only SARS-CoV-2 and its variants but other known and even unknown coronaviruses that may potentially make the jump from animals to humans and cause widespread illness.”

According to IVI, CEPI ensures equitable access to the vaccines it funds. Under the consortium agreement, IVI and its partner organizations are committed to ensuring equitable access to the vaccines resulting from this project by CEPI's Equitable Access Policy.

BioNet will provide access to affordable vaccines. It added that technology transfer considerations to other low—and middle-income country producers have already been agreed upon.