Crypto News: A universal Covid shot

Hi, it's Bob in New York. New Covid variants keep on emerging, so many that it's hard to keep track. Is there one shot to protect against them all? But first...

Oxford was one of the first across the finish line with a Covid vaccine. Now it's focusing on preventing future pandemics.
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Vaccine makers are racing to keep up with an ever-changing coronavirus. Moderna and Pfizer spent months testing mRNA vaccine boosters targeting the original omicron strain. But last week, after reviewing the data, US regulators instead advised them instead to develop boosters that would target the latest omicron strains, BA.4 and BA.5.

By the time those come out this fall, the virus may have moved on to new variants, necessitating yet another round of boosters. So is there a better way?

Many researchers think so. They're working on pan-coronavirus vaccines. The idea is to create a broader-acting shot that could provide long-term protection against a range of future Covid variants. If the more ambitious versions of the concept come to fruition, such vaccines may also provide protection against close cousins of Covid that haven't yet spilled over into people from bats or other animal hosts.

I wrote about this effort for a cover story for Bloomberg Businessweek last December. The bad news is that most of the pan-coronavirus efforts are a few years away from our knowing whether they will work in people. The good news is that pan-coronavirus science is making progress.

In the latest findings, published in Science magazine, researchers from the California Institute of Technology and elsewhere report results from an animal study of a vaccine containing portions of spike receptors from eight coronaviruses, including the Covid beta strain as well as various bat and pangolin coronaviruses. The vaccine, developed with technology from the University of Oxford, provided broad protection in monkeys beyond the strains it was targeting.

"It is wishful thinking" to imagine that Covid will stop mutating, says Pamela Bjorkman, a structural biologist at the Caltech, who is senior author of the study. "In theory, this vaccine will never have to be updated."

The work "is really compelling evidence that we might be on the right track," says Regina Dugan, president of Wellcome Leap, a nonprofit that helped fund the research.

While the current booster strategy makes sense in the short term, it means "we are one step behind the virus," says Melanie Saville, executive director of vaccine research for the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations. It is spending $200 million over the next several years to fund different vaccines that could provide broader, longer-lasting protection, including the Caltech-Oxford shot.

It's still an open question whether any of the pan-coronavirus vaccines can provide long-lasting protection in people. And even if universal coronavirus shots work, there is the question of whether they can be produced on a mass scale. But given the pace at which Covid is mutating—and the likelihood new coronaviruses will emerge in the future—there is every reason to urgently to try. —Robert Langreth

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Ask us anything — well, anything health-related that is! Each week we're picking a reader question and putting it to our network of experts. So get in touch via AskPrognosis@bloomberg.net.