Next-generation Covid vaccine likely soon: N K Arora

Pune: India is likely to soon get next- or second-generation vaccines, including pan-coronavirus vaccine candidates, Dr N K Arora, chairman of the Covid-19 working group of the National Technical Advisory Group on Immunization told the media agency on Saturday.

He said a wider immunological coverage was expected to tackle new variants of Covid and provide durable or long-term protection against the infection and disease.

"As of now, six-seven groups, including scientific institutions and industries, are currently working on the second- generation vaccines. New mRNA and DNA vaccine platforms are expected to move further in developing the next generation of vaccines and can potentially be game changers in terms of the country's current vaccination programme," Dr Arora said.

Dr Arora said the department of biotechnology was helping in catalysing the process and also closely monitoring the developments.

The mRNA technology is a messenger RNA — a copy of DNA sequence information of spike protein — and is encapsulated in lipid formulation and injected into the body. In the body cells, it makes the spike protein that stimulates the protective antibodies to fight coronavirus. Dr Arora said the technology was versatile and could be effectively employed in future for improved and novel vaccines.

Dr Gagandeep Kang, one of India’s top virologists, also emphasised on the broadly protective Sars-CoV2 vaccine that protects against a range of SARS-CoV2 variants. She told TOI that there were two ways of thinking about SARS-CoV2 vaccines “that are better than what we have today”.

Dr Kang said, “The first strategy is to have a broadly protective SARS-CoV2 vaccine that protects against a range of SARS-CoV2 variants. The plan is to either have a single antigen that induces a broad response or an effective mixture of antigens against which immune responses are made.”Dr Kang said, “The second strategy is to have a universal Coronavirus vaccine that protects against the current and future coronaviruses causing illnesses such as common cold, or focus only on the severe disease-causing agents like SARS-CoV1 and 2, MERSCoV and other corona viruses that are yet to come. The first approach is more feasible than the second one. But we need to develop the science for both.”

Dr Kang said other than the inactivated vaccines, the current Covid-19 vaccines only targeted one antigen — the spike protein. “Though these vaccines provide excellent protection against severe disease and hospitalisation, their effectiveness against mild disease and infection appears to wane against each new variant, especially Omicron,” she said.

“For the new vaccines, we have a lot of learning. The companies have started the clinical research. Such efforts have been going on for the influenza vaccines for a long time. We had never invested in new technologies for universal influenza vaccines as we should have done,” Dr Kang added.

one,” Dr Kang added. Experts said Omicron had shown antibodies induced by vaccination with an older strain did not provide much protection against infection . According to experts, broadly protective vaccines would elicit both antibody and T-cell immune responses against the spike protein and so-called conserved “epitopes”.