Coronavirus Pathogenesis and Broadly Protective Vaccine Development

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The SARS-COV-2 virus has had a major impact on morbidity and mortality worldwide, as well as having devastating global economic and societal impact. The overall impact cannot be quantified, some of which is due to the worldwide public health response and not the virus itself. Knowledge of the antibody levels present in a population could offer great insights into current and future response efforts. We need far more information to fully understand what impact immunity will have on the spread and severity of this and future pandemic viruses. This knowledge could change how we handle the next stages of this pandemic, the post pandemic period, and prepare for future pandemics. Therefore, we completed a nationwide serosurvey to enroll a 10,000 person representative sample of the US population to determine how many individuals have been exposed/infected with SARS-CoV-2 during the initial stages of the pandemic. The first portion of this study was published offering insight into the early portion of the pandemic and the epidemiology and immune response early on. We then followed these individuals longitudinally and retested them at 6 months and 12 months to look for seroconversion and history of documented infection. This allows us to assess correlates of protection and the trajectory of antibody titers over time. The data yielded from this study, in conjunction with other similar studies can better guide the decisions that are made as this pandemic continues. We hope to publish these data in the coming year offering even further insight into this pandemic. In addition to our nationwide serosurvey we have also initiated a project to study individuals with rare diseases. This study in collaboration with the NCATS RDCRN evaluated how the COVID19 pandemic has affected individuals living with over 500 different rare diseases. The RDCRN has initiated an online survey and we initiated biological sampling to allow us to better identify the level of exposure and immunity in this niche community. We expect to publish these data over the next year and the data from this study will allow us to better understand how we can better address the pandemic needs of this community that is often overlooked. We have initiated work in collaboration with Jeff Taubenberger's VPES to develop a broadly protective, universal beta-coronavirus vaccine. We are playing a lead role in the design and manufacture of these vaccines. Once the VPES completes preclinical work and we are able to complete GMP manufacturing, we hope to begin with phase I trials. We also have collaborated with the VPES to investigate various aspects of SARS-COV2 pathogenesis including a large scale pathology study of those with severe disease, gene expression analysis, and in vitro studies of viral variants. Lastly, we are working on developing challenge models for beta-coronaviruses that may be used to study pathogenesis as well as testing vaccines. We currently have made a seed virus from an OC43 beta-coronavirus and have a contract in place to initiate GMP manufacture.