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Coronaviruses roadmap:
Vaccines

Research roadmap for coronavirus vaccine development

Download 202402 Draft Coronavirus Vaccine research roadmap Final

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Vectored vaccines

Dependencies

Next steps

Vectored vaccines

Research Question

  • To develop safe and effective vectored vaccines for coronaviruses in pets, livestock, and wildlife

Research Gaps and Challenges

  • Vector safety and stability: Ensuring that vaccine vectors are safe, nonpathogenic, and stable in diverse animal species
  • Pre-existing immunity to viral vectors: Pre-existing immunity to viral
    vectors (like adenoviruses or measles viruses) in animals can reduce
    the efficacy of vectored vaccines
  • Efficient vaccine delivery to wildlife: Delivering vaccines to large
    populations of livestock or free-ranging wildlife is logistically
    challenging
  • Cross-species transmission: The risk of vaccine vectors spreading from
    vaccinated animals to non-target species, including humans, poses a
    safety risk
  • Cost and scalability: The cost of producing vectored vaccines and
    scaling them for large populations, especially in wildlife or low resource livestock farming environments, can be prohibitive
  • Understanding host-specific immunity: The immune systems of pets,
    livestock, and wild animals, vary significantly. A vaccine vector that
    works well in one species might not elicit the same immune response
    in another
  • Ecological and evolutionary impacts in wildlife: The mass vaccination
    of wildlife with vectored vaccines may have unforeseen ecological
    consequences, such as altering predator-prey dynamics or influencing
    viral evolution in non-target species

Solution Routes

  • Determine the most suitable vectors
  • Develop next-generation vector platforms, such as novel or less
    common viral vectors that avoid pre-existing immunity
  • New approaches are needed for vaccine/ immunogen design to
    achieve robust protection
  • Engineer vectors to be more thermostable, enabling easier storage and
    transport for use in remote or resource-poor environments
  • Educational campaigns about new vaccine strategies and platforms

Dependencies

  • Funding: Increased funding is needed for comparative immunology
    studies across species, particularly wild animals
  • Immune system response to infection: Detailed research into how
    different species’ immune systems respond to coronavirus infection
    and vaccination is required. This includes understanding differences in
    innate, mucosal, and adaptive immune responses
  • Route of delivery: Evaluate alternate routes of vaccine delivery
    (intranasal, oral, topical)
  • Assay techniques and endpoints: Interlaboratory variability in assay techniques and assay endpoints limits comparison among measurements of immunogenicity. Standardized and harmonised assays and protocols are required
  • Animal models: Establishment of reliable animal models for studying coronavirus infections in pets, livestock, and wildlife for preclinical vaccine testing

State Of the Art