University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill - Universal vaccine targets coronaviruses to prevent future pandemics [Medical Xpress, June 2021]

Title:

Universal vaccine targets coronaviruses to prevent future pandemics 

 

By:

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

 

Published:

Medical Xpress, 22 June 2021

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-06-universal-vaccine-coronaviruses-future-pandemics.html

 

From the article:

Scientists at the University of North Carolina Gillings School of Global Public Health have developed a universal vaccine that protected mice not just against COVID-19 but also other coronaviruses and triggered the immune system to fight off a dangerous variant.

 

Scholarly Article (June 2020) - Genomic determinants of pathogenicity in SARS-CoV-2 and other human coronaviruses [Gussow, A.B. et al.]

Title:
Genomic determinants of pathogenicity in SARS-CoV-2 and other human coronaviruses

Authors:
Ayal B. Gussow, Noam Auslander, Guilhem Faure, Yuri I. Wolf, Feng Zhang & Eugene V. Koonin

Published:
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), 10 June 2020
https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/06/09/2008176117

Significance:
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is an urgent, global threat. Here we analyze the genome of the virus that causes COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, along with other members of the coronavirus family. Our analysis identifies crucial genomic features that are unique to SARS-CoV-2 and two other deadly coronaviruses, SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV. These features correlate with the high fatality rate of these coronaviruses as well as their ability to switch hosts from animals to humans. The identified features could represent crucial elements of coronavirus virulence, and allow for detecting animal coronaviruses that have the potential to make the jump to humans in the future.