UW researchers are designing COVID-19 vaccines on computers (VIDEO)

Scientists at the University of Washington School of Medicine have created a vaccine candidate that produces virus-neutralizing antibodies in mice at levels 10 times greater than is seen in people who have recovered from coronavirus infections.

The nanoparticle vaccine candidate was created using structure-based vaccine design techniques invented at UW Medicine.

According to the scientists, the candidate is a “self-assembling protein nanoparticle that displays 60 copies of the SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein’s receptor-binding domain in a highly immunogenic array,” which means that “the molecular structure of the vaccine roughly mimics that of a virus, which may account for its enhanced ability to provoke an immune response.”

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“We hope that our nanoparticle platform may help fight this pandemic that is causing so much damage to our world,” said King, inventor of the computational vaccine design technology at the Institute for Protein Design in a news release. “The potency, stability, and manufacturability of this vaccine candidate differentiate it from many others under investigation.”

The vaccine candidate has been transferred to two companies for clinical development.

To find out more about the study and the nanoparticle vaccine, watch the below video by UW Medicine.