Health Tokyo Univ. researchers develop nasal COVID vaccine

[thomas]

Researchers at the University of Tokyo's Pandemic Preparedness, Infection and Advanced Research Centre (UTOPIA) have announced that a new nasal coronavirus vaccine has shown promising results in animal trials. The team, led by UTOPIA Director Kawaoka Yoshihiro, stated that the vaccine helps protect against severe illness and can potentially curb the spread of infection by suppressing viral replication in the nasal passages.

When a vaccine with the artificial virus was administered nasally to mice, immunity was achieved on the mucous membranes of their nasal cavity and lungs. The new type reportedly achieves particularly wide immunity coverage in the lungs when compared to mRNA vaccines. Next, when a group of eight hamsters treated with the nasal vaccine was infected with the delta variant of the coronavirus and omicron's XBB subvariant, neither of these virus variants propagated in the lungs. The nasal cavities of around half of the hamsters were reportedly free of viral growth on the third day after infection, and even in the other half, the amount of growth was significantly suppressed, disappearing by the sixth day. Kawaoka commented, "The nasal vaccine is effective for respiratory tract infections and is thought to be effective in preventing the spread of infection. Unlike mRNA vaccines, it has the advantage of providing immunity similar to that acquired through actual viral infection."

New nasal COVID vaccine offers high immunity in animal tests: Tokyo researchers - The Mainichi

TOKYO -- A new type of coronavirus vaccine administered nasally has proven effective when tested on animals, researchers at the University of Tokyo Pa

mainichi.jp

SARS-CoV-2 virus lacking the envelope and membrane open-reading frames as a vaccine platform - Nature Communications

In this study, the authors report a single cycle-replicating SARS-CoV-2 vaccine candidate virus (ΔEM) and show that it induces spike-specific IgA and CD8+ T cells targeting spike and nucleocapsid proteins and provides broad and efficient protection in vaccinated animals.

www.nature.com