Scientists working on a new Covid vaccine say they have made a huge discovery, which could change booster jabs. Experts are working on Australia ’s first mRNA jab at the Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences (MIPS) in collaboration with the Doherty Institute. Ahead of a preclinical study, they believe they may have solved the issue causing the lessening of effectiveness of boosters as Covid viruses continue to mutate.
Researchers have tested their mRNA ‘membrane-anchored receptor-binding domain’ (mRNA RBD-TM) vaccine against older Covid vaccines, reports News.au. A report published in Molecular Therapy Methods and Clinical Development reads: “Waves of coronavirus infections resulting from the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic are caused by mutants of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) that evade humoral immunity previously acquired by way of either vaccination or viral infection.
“Although vaccination with an ancestral SARS-CoV-2 whole-spike vaccine provides protection against serious illness, 1 , 2 boosting immunity with ancestral vaccines is ineffective at preventing infection by Omicron variants. To address this shortcoming, bivalent mRNA spike vaccines were introduced that initially encoded BA.1, and later BA.5, spike proteins in addition to the ancestral spike protein.
