Any new coronavirus vaccine that works well and is safe will still have the daunting challenge of needing to be produced to scale in a very short amount of time. It will also have to be safely delivered into the hands of the most remote populations. The more complex and untested the vaccine approach, the more difficult it will be to both scale its production and deliver it around the world.

Image/Hannah A Bullock; Azaibi Tamin

By building upon on an existing safe and effective vaccine, one with already well-established and currently active manufacturing hubs, one which could be made to store on the shelf until it’s reconstituted with water, researchers at the Jefferson Vaccine Center at Thomas Jefferson University have a COVID-19 vaccine candidate that could cover a global need.

“Our vaccine candidate, CORAVAX™, is made from part of the current coronavirus and that is combined with another proven vaccine that serves as a carrier of sorts,” says Matthias Schnell, PhD, Director of the Jefferson Vaccine Center. “The benefit is that the ‘carrier’ vaccine has already been rigorously tested and shown to be safe and effective. There are manufacturing plants around the world already running and with the technological know-how to produce large quantities of that vaccine. We can leverage that efficiency and safety record.”

“This pandemic is likely to reach every corner of our planet,” says Mark Tykocinski, MD, Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs of Thomas Jefferson University, and Dean of its Sidney Kimmel Medical College. “That is an unprecedented scale. We need a vaccine that’s not only safe and effective, but also one that can be made to scale and in a way that can get to potentially all the world’s population . CORAVAX™ has that potential.”

CORAVAX™ is a vaccine made from a portion of the SARS-COV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19 disease. Rather than use the entire virus, Dr. Schnell and colleagues use only part of it, the spike protein, a component that is most likely to generate a protective immune response.

Read more at Thomas Jefferson University