A team of researchers from Taiwan’s Academia Sinica has developed a series of next-generation vaccines that early results show could be highly effective against the Omicron variant of COVID-19 as well as new mutations of the disease.
In an interview with CNA Friday, Dr. Tao Mi-hua (陶秘華) of Academia Sinica’s Biomedical Translation Research Center said that an Omicron-specific vaccine developed by the center produced 37 times the neutralizing antibodies compared to traditional COVID-19 vaccines.
It was one of four created during the world-leading research project, together with Delta-specific, Omicron-Delta hybrid, and half-dose bivalent types.
While the initial findings showed the Omicron vaccine to be effective in tackling its namesake variant, it was weaker against other strains of the disease.
It was the Delta-specific and half-dose bivalent types that proved most capable of producing neutralizing antibodies for a broad spectrum of mutations.
This has led the researchers to believe that such vaccine types may be the foundation for the next generation of COVID-19 jabs, amid increasing concerns over breakthrough infections and immune escape.
According to Tao, the decision to put together an mRNA vaccine project came after the first cases of COVID-19 hit Taiwan in early 2020.
The team decided to shift their focus to include the Omicron variant after the World Health Organization (WHO) declared it the dominant strain worldwide in November 2021, Tao said.
According to Tao, within two weeks the team had developed a framework for the research, and it took them another week to produce a vaccine sample.
All four types were tested on mice that had been fully vaccinated with an existing COVID-19 vaccine within the past year, Tao said.
Tao added that he hoped that the findings could be used in other applications, such as tackling viruses like Zika and avian flu, as well as in adaptable vaccines for cancer, allergies, and gene therapy.
However, he cautioned that the process of getting such vaccines into mass production was a long and arduous process, involving lab work, clinical trials, and manufacturing.
The work on the four vaccines is currently at the lab stage, Tao said, and after publishing initial results on Jan. 31, he expects to have more complete results ready by mid-February in preparation for peer-review and publication.

Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel