Will Our Next COVID Vaccine Be…Nanotech?

Photo by Hakan Nural on Unsplash

It sounds like something out of science fiction. In fact, science fiction writers love to use vague comments about nanotech and immunity to justify a world without the common cold.

But it might be close to becoming reality.

Or rather, we might be getting a vaccine that is based off of nanoparticles. In animal trials with mice and monkey, the nanotech-based vaccine protected the animals from a variety of betacoronaviruses.

The nanoparticles mimic the spike protein fro SARS-CoV-2 and seven other betacoronaviruses.

Not only were the animals protected from all eight of those, but they also showed an immune response to one researchers didn’t include: SARS-CoV.

In other words, this could be the holy grail…the universal coronavirus vaccine that could not only protect us from COVID but blunt the effect of any future coronavirus pandemics.

So, How Does This Thing Work?

You start with a protein nanoparticle, which is a little cage-like structure. It’s designed to be sticky.

You then stick bits of virus to it. You can use one virus (homotypic) or multiple (mosaic).

Basically, with a mosaic nanoparticle, instead of showing your immune system a picture of one…