US military medics claim that the first phase of clinical trials of their new “supervaccine” against COVID-19 has been successful. According to the developers, this drug is able to protect the body from both Omicron and other currently known variants of the coronavirus.
The drug was developed at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center (WRAIR), based in Maryland. But although the American “supervaccine” promises protection against various variants of the coronavirus (including Omicron and Delta), as well as partly from other related infections, many experts are skeptical of the victorious reports of vaccine developers and generally express doubts about the possibility creation of such a drug.
As the BBC notes, while vaccination remains the most effective means of combating coronavirus, the emergence of the Omicron strain has greatly confused the cards for vaccine developers. Scientists are faced with the fact that as the coronavirus mutates, it begins to better and better bypass the immune defenses of the human body, respectively, all vaccines currently used in the world will protect against COVID-19 less and less effectively.
at the National Military Medical Center. Walter Reed say they have found a solution to this problem. According to them, the SpFN ferritin vaccine has already shown remarkable results in laboratory animal studies and has even passed the first phase of clinical trials in humans. Injection of the “miracle vaccine” elicits a strong binding antibody response against the receptor-binding domain and spike proteins of all variants of concern, the developers say. According to these claims, the drug demonstrated a “potent neutralizing antibody response” against coronaviruses.
According to the head of the department of emerging infectious diseases of the center, Kayvon Modjarrad, the drug developed by his team should provide protection, at least partial, against all variants of the coronavirus at once – both existing ones and those that may appear in the future. And as a result of such a vaccination, the immune response is much more powerful when compared with other vaccines, the developers say.
As the BBC notes, the development of SpFN (spike-ferritin nanoparticles) began long before the current COVID-19 pandemic. At first, military doctors tried to develop a vaccine that could protect against SARS (SARS) and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS). Now the objects of the efforts of scientists have become variants of the coronavirus that causes the disease COVID.
“We take the whole viral family as an object for research,” explains Dr. Modjarrad. – Having studied some property of a particular virus, we look at how it manifests itself in its “closest relatives”. Such a broad approach makes it possible to develop universal vaccines and other medicines for the prevention and treatment of diseases caused by the entire viral family.”
The resulting vaccine refers to protein (or peptide) preparations, when, during vaccination, viral protein fragments that are not capable of self-replication enter the body. The body selects antibodies of a suitable form for different parts of the foreign protein – and thus retains the ability to neutralize even a partially mutated virus.
According to the developers, SpFN is part of a “forward-looking” strategy by the US military to combat the current pandemic and act as a first line of defense against variants of concern and similar viruses that may appear in the future.
The US Army’s strategy is to develop a “pancoronavirus” vaccine technology that has the potential to provide safe, effective, and reliable protection against multiple strains and species of the coronavirus, Dr. Mojarrad explained.
The fact that the vaccine being created is highly likely to be able to protect against all variants of the coronavirus, the developers from WRAIR said back in June 2020. And earlier this year, they announced the success of a Phase 1 clinical trial of SpFN involving 72 volunteers.
The “supervaccine” will only be mass-produced after extensive human trials have been completed demonstrating that the drug is safe and effective. It will then have to go through an approval process by the US Drug Regulators (FDA). At this point, it is unclear which organization will be tasked with mass-producing the drug once regulatory hurdles are overcome.
Be that as it may, the expert community, it seems, is still skeptical about the statements of American military doctors, the BBC emphasizes. For example, University of Maryland School of Pharmacy professor and BMJ senior editor Peter Doshi doubts the very idea of developing such a drug: “I have been hearing similar statements from the developers of a flu vaccine for decades, not even years. Both the flu and Sars-Cov-2 are a type of rapidly mutating RNA viruses that constantly produce more and more new variants. So, personally, I don’t have an answer to the question of what part of the viral genome can be considered stable and unchanged enough to develop a single vaccine based on it, which will not become obsolete as new mutations appear.”
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