SYDNEY, March 25 (Xinhua/APP) –: Two new Australian-made COVID-19 vaccines will enter trials with hopes that they may provide more targeted protection against the virus.
The two vaccine candidates, unveiled on Friday, were created by researchers at the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity and the Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences (MIPS), with 114 eligible Australians to be recruited to participate in the first-in-human trial.
Both vaccines are distinct from existing vaccines, because they focus the immune response on the tip of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, called the receptor binding domain (RBD).
“The RBD enables the virus to enter and infect cells in the body and elicits over 90 percent of neutralizing antibodies (antibodies that can block the virus) following SARS-CoV-2 infection,” the Peter Doherty Institute explained in a statement on Friday.
While both vaccines target the RBD of SARS-CoV-2, they use different technologies. The first, RBD protein vaccine, is a traditional recombinant protein vaccine, and works by creating an immune response to proteins in the virus. The other, RBD mRNA vaccine, used the genetic sequence of the tip of the spike, rather than the protein itself.
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