Researchers say they have made a "promising" breakthrough as they are developing a "holy grail" vaccine that can protect against multiple Covid variants.
Scientists at the Francis Crick Institute believe they found a genetic feature of the Covid-19 virus that appeared "similar" to a number of coronaviruses that are less prone to mutations.
The findings were published in Science Translational Medicine and looked at if antibodies that are trained to target earlier variants can also neutralise other strains of Covid-19.
When tested in mice, the vaccine used by scientists generated antibodies that were capable of neutralising multiple variants of Covid including the original strains, Alpha, Beta, Delta, the first Omicron variant and two bat coronaviruses.
They also found they neutralised the seasonal "common cold" virus.
Earlier this year, a chief scientist at the World Health Organisation said that developing a vaccine that would "go beyond and be effective against other coronaviruses would be the holy grail".
Kevin Ng, one of the study’s co-authors and a PhD student in the Retrovirus laboratory at the Francis Crick Institute, said what they found was a “promising target for a potential pan-coronavirus vaccine because this area is much more similar across different coronaviruses than the S1 area. It is less subject to mutations, and so a vaccine targeted at this area should be more robust”.
George Kassiotis, principal group leader at the Francis Crick Institute, added: "This differs from vaccines that target the more variable S1 area which, while effective against the matching variant they are designed against, are less able to target other variants or a broad range of coronaviruses.
“There’s a lot of research still to do as we continue to test S2 antibodies against different coronaviruses and look for the most appropriate route to design and test a potential vaccine.”
Researchers said this newly developed vaccine would not stop people from getting Covid-19, much like the current jab, but would look to "prime" the immune system to "response to a future coronavirus infection”.
Professor Denis Kinane, a world-leading Immunologist and founding Scientist of Cignpost Diagnostics, recently told The Mirror how one reason fully-vaccinate individuals are getting re-infected is that the current vaccine was only developed for the earlier variants.
He said: "The vaccination programme has been geared to earlier variants of Omicron, so they are not as effective against emerging subvariants.
"In fact, the BA.4 and BA.5 strains have been shown to overcome immunity developed for other strains (immune escape) of the virus as evidenced by the rising numbers of reinfections."
