Here comes a vax for all Covid variants

Breathing Space

- Filed for a patent

- The work is in the initial phase

- It needs to be passed through several trials

- The research work on Covid-19 also recognized by WHO

Pune: Meet the scientist, who claims to have designed a vaccine that will act as a panacea for all variants of coronavirus, which triggered the once-in-a-century pandemic a couple of years ago.

Frankly speaking, the peptide vaccine, which has been developed by the scientist, could protect against any future variants of the coronavirus family.

Talking to Bizz Buzz, Dr Parth Sarthi Sen Gupta, who is currently working in the Department of Biosciences and Bioengineering, DY Patil International University (Akurdi, Pune) as an Assistant Professor, says, "we have designed a peptide vaccine which could protect against any future variants of the coronavirus."

His work has been published in the 'Journal of Molecular Liquids' that is devoted to fundamental aspects of structure, interactions and dynamic processes in simple, molecular and complex liquids.

In this study, the scientist has employed immunoinformatic approaches to design AbhiSCoVac - a multi-epitope, multi-target, chimeric peptide that would be able to generate protective immunity against all six virulent members of the coronavirus family, hCoV-229E, hCoV-HKU1, hCoV-OC43, SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV as well as SARS-CoV-2. The designed vaccine was found to be highly stable, antigenic and immunogenic.

This vaccine is one of a kind as its unique selling proposition (USP) is that no other vaccine in the world has been designed to cope with all the coronaviridae family viruses at a single time.

According to Dr Sen Gupta, "we first identified various conserved regions in the spike protein of the six different viruses that undergo very few mutations and thus change a little in the course of pandemic and as mentioned, these regions of the protein identified are highly immunogenic which means they can produce high levels of immune memory in the body that is required to protect against the viruses."

Unlike other vaccines, these identified were selected after they have shown high binding strengths with a protein called TLR4 - the same protein responsible for detecting SARS-COV-2 viruses in the body and initiating the immune responses. We also simulated injection of the vaccine into virtual patients and have found that this vaccine is highly capable of protecting the recipient from the viruses, he said. Currently, we have filed a patent, he went on, for this work which has been published in the patent journal with the application No: 202231020075A on May 6. The work is in the initial phase and need to be passed through several trials before production of the vaccine, he added.

The research work on Covid-19 has been highlighted by more than 30 (national and international) news agencies and also recognized by World Health Organization (WHO).

Earlier, Dr Sen Gupta was working at IISER Berhampur as a Postdoctoral Research Scientist. He has published 40 research articles including book chapter in reputed peer-reviewed journal. Moreover, he has filed three patents (two national and one international (granted)). Furthermore, he is a guest associate and topic editor of cellular and infection microbiology with an impact factor of 6.073.

We first identified various conserved regions in the spike protein of the 6 different viruses that undergo very few mutations and thus change a little in the course of pandemic and as mentioned these regions of the protein identified are highly immunogenic which means they can produce high levels of immune memory in the body that is required to protect against the viruses