SEATTLE — A new vaccine designed to provide broad protection against COVID-19 and related coronaviruses has begun human trials.
The vaccine called GBP511, developed by UW Medicine’s Institute for Protein Design, builds on a self-assembling nanoparticle technology.
It focuses on Coronaviruses: SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome), MERS (Middle East respiratory syndrome), and COVID-19 (coronavirus disease of 2019).
“The beauty of this approach is that by presenting the immune system with multiple related antigens at once, we can train it to recognize features that are conserved across the entire sarbecovirus family,” said David Veesler, professor of biochemistry at UW Medicine and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, who led the preclinical studies. “That’s exactly what you need to prepare for unpredictable future threats.”
Initial preclinical studies in animals showed promising immune responses.
The first round of human trials will be organized by SK Bioscience and will take place in Perth, Australia.
These trials will evaluate the safety and immune responses of nearly 340 adults participating in the study.