CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — As COVID-19 cases begin to rise again in North Carolina, a team of researchers at UNC’s Gillings School of Global Public Health says a universal coronavirus vaccine could be on the horizon.
What You Need to Know
North Carolina falls below the national average with 59% of adults who have at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine compared of the national average of 67.7%
The N.C. Department of Health and Human Services is reporting a nearly 50% increase in new COVID-19 cases compared to the start of the month.
DHHS says 99% of new cases are of people who have not been vaccinated
The June 22 study showed the vaccine developed in the Baric Lab at UNC protected mice against COVID-19 and additional strains of coronaviruses.
“For me it really raises optimism, that some of the concepts that we are working on could also move into human clinical trials relatively quickly someday,” said Dr. David Martinez, a postdoctoral researcher at UNC.
Martinez has been studying viruses for eight years. He is one of the lead researchers on the universal vaccine project, along with Ralph Baric, an epidemiologist at UNC's Gillings School.
The team’s research combined the mRNA from multiple coronaviruses, differing from current vaccines being offered, Moderna and Pfizer, which only use the code of SARS-CoV-2.
“We designed it in a way that could maximize the breath of immune recognition not only against the COVID-19 virus but also against the virus that caused the 2003 epidemic out of China, as well as other viruses that circulate in bats, that are close cousins of both of these viruses,” Martinez explained.
Martinez said the next steps would be to test the vaccine on a larger animal model.
“If those results look equally promising, then we could take them into Phase 1 of clinical trials,” Martinez said.
But even if the universal vaccine gets FDA approval, it is still up to the individual person to choose to receive the vaccine.
The research comes on the heels of North Carolina lagging behind in vaccination efforts. Compared to the national average of nearly 68% of adults with at least one dose, the Tar Heel state is sitting at 59%.
The N.C. Department of Health and Human Services is reporting a nearly 50% increase in daily new cases since the start of July. DHHS Secretary Dr. Mandy Cohen says 99% of new cases are of people who have not received a vaccine.
“There’s really been a lot of research prior to the pandemic that went into the development of these vaccines. It’s really not founded on shaky ground, but in fact on many, many years of work on the mRNA vaccine development,” Martinez said.