Cambridge coronavirus vaccine clinical trials could begin in the autumn

A £1.9 million funding boost from Innovate UK, the Government’s innovation agency, has provided support for a collaboration between Cambridge spin-out company DIOSynVax, the University of Cambridge and the University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust. The research team used banks of genetic sequences of all known coronaviruses, including those from bats, the natural hosts of many relatives of human coronaviruses, to develop their vaccine candidate called DIOS-CoVax2. They have developed libraries of computer-generated antigen structures which can train the immune system to target key regions of the virus and system to make good anti-viral responses. These immune responses include neutralising antibodies, which block virus infection, and T-cells, which remove virus-infected cells.