As of July 2022, uncertainty persists as waves of SARS-CoV-2 continue to emerge. Over time, new virus variants arise and threaten to reduce the impact of existing vaccine efforts. There is a clear need for strategies to both tackle emerging variants, and to protect populations against potential future threats to human health such as related bat viruses.
A new consortium aims to address these issues by establishing the first-in-human clinical proof of concept for a new vaccine design. The vaccine will target both SARS-CoV-2 and a number of related bat viruses which have the potential to spread to humans. It builds on technologies developed by the Molecular Immunology Group at the University of Oxford and by the Bjorkman Group based at Caltech – led by Professor Alain Townsend at the MRC Human Immunology Unit (Radcliffe Department of Medicine) and by Professor Pamela Bjorkman respectively.
The consortium brings together researchers from the University of Oxford and Caltech to work in collaboration with deep tech innovation organisation CPI, and industrial biotechnology company Ingenza Ltd (Caltech-CPI-Oxford-Ingenza).