Status: 04/28/2022 04:05 a.m
The development of corona vaccines is still in full swing. Research is being carried out on more effective and specialized vaccines, on different types and on different dosage forms. An overview.
Five vaccines have already been approved in the EU, and 36 worldwide. Most of them, however, only in a few countries. These include vaccines from Cuba, Iran, Kazakhstan and China. Further approval applications are in progress or have at least been announced.
And of course research continues, according to the WHO on 349 development projects for corona vaccines.
All vaccines that are currently approved are based on the original virus strain discovered in Wuhan. However, this is not enough, as Omikron has shown. Although vaccinations continue to protect against severe courses, but with its approximately 50 genetic changes compared to the original virus, Omicron was able to spread rapidly – despite vaccinations.
Second generation vaccines
Therefore, there should now be new vaccines, which are referred to as second-generation vaccines. These can roughly be divided into three categories: vaccines that also offer good protection against new variants, those that are specially developed for people with a weakened immune system, and those that ensure a strong immune defense directly in the airways, around vaccinated people protect even better and so that no one can “house” the virus and infect others (without getting sick themselves).
Category one includes the new vaccines that the manufacturers BioNTech/Pfizer and Moderna, among others, are researching. Their second-generation vaccines could be the first to hit the European market this fall. They are intended as booster vaccinations that, among other things, protect more effectively against omicron.
Both are testing vaccines specially tailored to Omikron. At the same time, however, research is also being carried out into so-called bivalent vaccines. This is, for example, a mixture of the original vaccine and the omicron adaptation, which – if the plan works – protects against several variants at the same time.
Vaccination gaps should be closed
The University Hospital of Tübingen, among others, is researching vaccines specifically for people with weakened immune systems. “This is a very important gap where people have not yet been able to protect themselves, and there could be progress there,” says Rolf Hömke, spokesman for the Association of Research-Based Pharmaceutical Companies (vfa). Since people whose immune system is weakened are less likely to produce antibodies, the focus here is on the second type of fight against pathogens, the T cells. These can recognize when a cell is infected and destroy it.
In their phase 1/2 clinical trial, the team tested the vaccine on 14 people. 13 people in this study had a measurable T-cell response 28 days after vaccination. Study director Professor Juliane Walz says: “The first data from the phase II study are extremely pleasing and give us hope that we can make a decisive contribution with CoVac-1 to protect high-risk groups from a severe course of Covid-19 in the future.” For the successful completion of the study, the researchers are currently still looking for patients with congenital or acquired B-cell defects.
Inhale instead of pricking
The third category of the new vaccines is about preventing symptomless transmissions and protecting vaccinated people even better – by specifically training the immune system of the upper respiratory tract in order to better block corona viruses here. With a nasal spray, nose drops or an inhalation as a vaccination instead of an injection.
In Germany, the Free University of Berlin, among others, is researching this in cooperation with the University of Bern. Here several sprays and drops were tested in preclinical studies on hamsters. The vaccine candidates are said to have produced robust neutralizing antibodies and prevented the virus from multiplying and signs of Covid-19 infection.
In principle, it is an elegant approach to vaccinate where it is most urgently needed, says vfa spokesman Hömke. However, there are two difficulties. On the one hand, each person produces a different amount of nasal mucus, the vaccination could get stuck in the mucus, the problem has to be solved. On the other hand, “the nose is very close to the brain, so you have to think carefully about which ingredients are suitable for sprays or drops”.
One for all?
Research is also being carried out worldwide on a universal vaccine that is intended to protect not only against known corona viruses, but also against possible new variants. To do this, researchers are looking, among other things, for unchangeable sites in the components of the virus. “It’s like bottle openers, they can have all kinds of designs, but there’s always the spot that opens bottles. That spot is always similar, so it’s the most interesting.”, explains Hömke. However, it should be noted that not every part of a virus component is immunogenic, i.e. suitable for eliciting an immune response. Research has also been going on for a long time into a universal vaccination for the flu, but the breakthrough has not yet been achieved.
Hömke is still optimistic about Covid-19, more than 300 projects are being researched worldwide – “I’ve never experienced that before, when it comes up, there were 25 vaccine projects for the same disease worldwide, and often only three to five”. The chances of a universal vaccine have never been so good.
contracts with the federal government
It will only be known in the near future whether all of these approaches will result in specific vaccines. Delivery bottlenecks should no longer exist. That is why the federal government has concluded precautionary contracts with five companies or consortia to provide corona vaccines for the period up to 2029, for 2.86 billion. The contractual partners are BioNTech, Celonic, IDT Biologika and bidding consortiums from the companies Wacker/Corden Pharma and CureVac/GSK.
Specifically, the federal government pays an annual “standby fee” so that companies have a certain production capacity available and, if necessary, produce 80 million vaccine doses per year promptly per company. It is not yet clear who will actually get the chance.