Washington University in St. Louis researchers were right on the nose—or, rather, in the nose—with their latest coronavirus vaccine development, which is nasally-administered and has been effective in tests on mice.
The university announced the study (co-authored by professor of medicine, molecular biology, pathology, and immunology Michael Diamond and professor of radiation oncology David Curiel and published in the online journal Cell) and its findings on Friday.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, researchers across the world have been racing to develop a vaccine to slow the spread of the virus. Washington University’s vaccine is set apart by the fact that it's administered through the nose instead of injected into muscles in the shoulder or thigh, like most vaccines.
Because the novel coronavirus targets the respiratory system, the nose is often the first place it infects. By giving patients a dose through the nose, their respiratory systems could be more directly protected while also boosting their immune systems to fight off the virus.
When both methods of delivery were tested in mice, the shot in the muscles worked only to reduce the severity of the infection and didn't prevent the mouse from spreading it, while the nasal spray completely protected the mice from infection and prevented spread.
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From Washington University's study: "On the left is lung tissue from a mouse that received a control vaccine that produced no protective effects. It shows a large number of inflammatory cells. On the right is lung tissue from a mouse that received a nasal vaccine encoding the virus' spike protein. The vaccine protected against infection, and large numbers of inflammatory cells are absent."
FluMist is another nasal vaccine used to prevent influenza, but it can't be used on certain groups of people because it contains a live form of the flu virus. This coronavirus vaccine, on the other hand, has no live virus in it, potentially making it safer for immunocompromised people. Unlike other vaccines, this vaccine also only needs to be administered only once to be effective, which is useful because many people don't return for the second dose of a vaccine.
The vaccine was made by inserting the spike protein—the protein used to attack other cells—from the coronavirus inside the virus that causes the common cold, tweaked so that it wouldn't actually cause illness.
Now that mice have been tested, researchers will move on to test the vaccine in primates and, eventually, human subjects.
