Our lab studies the immunology of infectious diseases and so when COVID-19 occurred, we
were in a unique position to be able to respond because this is sort of what we do, is look
at how the immune system protects against infection.
Specifically, as far as a COVID vaccine, what we’ve been doing is developing a vaccine
against a parasitic infection, but it’s a platform with which one can use to develop
a vaccines against COVID-19 so what our research efforts are in the lab is to develop what
might be a second or third generation vaccine.
So there’s two unique contributions that we’re making to COVID-19 research through
this lab.
So the first is the work of Allie Donlan, who is a graduate student, who has shown that
an allergic immune response, we call a type-2 immune response, actually predisposes to severe
disease and Allie has been able to show that if you neutralize that type-2 immune response
you actually protect an animal from COVID-19 suggest that we should be able to protect
people by neutralizing allergic cytokines.
We’ve seen both in the patient samples and the mouse data that the immune response to
the disease itself is very variable, and so if we can understand what causes these variations
in the host immune response or the host response in general, we might be able to tailor specific
personalized medicine than say a one-size-fits-all medication.
The second advance is that Mayuresh Abhyankar, who is an assistant professor in the group,
has shown that there is an adjuvant, something you add to a vaccine that will promote a long-lived
antibody response.
What we have shown is the immune response lasted for at least six months using our adjuvant
system, so that’s pretty promising and that’s one of the exciting aspects we want to apply
this platform for the COVID vaccine.
There is now five vaccines in the US that are in phase 3 clinical trials.
I’m really optimistic and I fully expect that healthcare providers will be vaccinated
probably at the end of this year or January and then will go to then vaccinate people
who have underlying illnesses that put them at greatest risk and then finally will be
to the general public I would imagine by spring/summer of next year, so the vaccine will be widely
available to everyone