Developing a vaccine for COVID-19

06 April 2020 | Story Nadia Krige. Photo Pexels. Read time 7 min.
Prof Ed Rybicki said it typically takes seven to 15 years to develop a vaccine from scratch for development and testing.
Prof Ed Rybicki said it typically takes seven to 15 years to develop a vaccine from scratch for development and testing.

As COVID-19 infection and morbidity rates increase around the globe, a number of companies and academic institutions have entered the race to develop a vaccine to protect us from the lethal virus. Creating a vaccine is, however, a complex process and could take several months, if not years.

In an effort to gain a measure of clarity around a possible COVID-19 vaccine, UCT News consulted with Professor Ed Rybicki, director of the Biopharming Research Unit (BRU) in the University of Cape Town’s (UCT) Department of Molecular and Cell Biology. 

Professor Rybicki is a plant virologist by training, and a biotechnologist and vaccinologist by funding circumstances. He has extensive experience in molecular virology and virus diversity studies with plant and human and animal viruses, which led to his working with a number of vaccine and expression system platforms.

Read the first interview with Professor Rybicki where he answers frequently asked questions regarding COVID-19 and its widespread effects.

Nadia Krige (NK): There is much talk about the development of a possible vaccine for COVID-19. In the simplest terms possible, can you maybe explain how the process of developing a vaccine works? Where do scientists start the process?

Ed Rybicki (ER): There are several ways in which the process can be started – either growing up large amounts of wild-type virus and inactivating it (eg polio, hepatitis A) or selecting mutants of the virus that don’t cause disease in model animals and growing them up as attenuated live vaccines (eg yellow fever virus). Scientist can also start by purifying wild-type virus or virus adapted to cell or egg culture, killing it, and purifying components of the virus (eg flu, hepatitis B).

Taking the gene that codes for the most important protein and expressing it in a suitable cell culture system, so as to make a lot of non-infectious protein, is also a way the process can be started. This helps if it makes virus-like particles (eg human papillomaviruses [HPV], hepatitis B).

Another way to start the process of developing a vaccine is by putting the gene for the new virus into another – a safe virus already used as a vaccine or which is harmless to humans (eg human adenovirus and vaccinia virus vectors, vesicular stomatitis virus). Only Ebola vaccines like this have been released; all others are experimental.

Lastly, developing a vaccine can also start by using the gene itself as an mRNA or DNA vaccine. This is at the cutting edge of technology and, at present, only experimental.

NK: What are the different phases that the vaccine needs to go through?

ER:

Preclinical: testing in animals for toxicity and immunogenicity

Phase I: up to 80-odd not-at-risk healthy human volunteers, placebo-controlled trial, test for safety – with some readout of immunogenicity

Phase II: couple of hundred healthy volunteers, generally not at risk, placebo-controlled study on dosing and immunogenicity, which can grade into an early-stage efficacy trial if participants are exposed to natural infection (Phase IIb)

Phase III: placebo-controlled, double-blinded trial on up to thousands of at-risk volunteers, looking for efficacy or protection from infection and/or disease

NK: At what point can human trials start taking place?

ER: After thorough testing in animals and the manufacture of vaccine batches under strict clinical Good Manufacturing Practice guidelines.

It generally takes a couple of years, but can be accelerated to a couple of months for flu viruses as the process is very well established.

NK: What are the risks involved in human trials?

ER: It may not be safe. The trials may not be immunogenic enough and/or it is not sufficiently protective or exacerbates infections – one or two HIV vaccine trials were like this.

NK: When does one know that a vaccine is successful and safe for rollout to the public?

ER: Typically after it has been proven safe for use during phase three of human trials. However, when compassionate/emergency use is justified, this can also happen after extensive animal efficacy studies to shortcut the process. A good example of this is the Ebola vaccine used in West Africa and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

One American vaccine for COVID-19 is being fast-tracked like this.

NK: How long would it take for a vaccine like this to be developed? 

ER: Typically, seven to 15 years from scratch for development and testing. Development could be much quicker: several firms claim they were ready in a couple of months with products (eg mRNA and DNA vaccines).

NK: How far along in the process are researchers currently in developing a vaccine for COVID-19? Are any UCT researchers playing a role in the development? 

ER: Several have been claimed already.

My group (BRU) and Professor Anna-Lise Williamson’s vaccine group’s postdoctoral fellow Emmanuel Margolin has already made a DNA vaccine candidate in an enhanced DNA expression vector patented by us. He is expressing the surface or S protein similarly to the way our groups already do for HIV-1 envelope protein in mammalian cells and in plants.

BRU’s spinout company Cape Bio Pharms is already making a portion of the S protein in plants as a reagent that is to be used in antibody detection tests and for helping another company make monoclonal antibodies to be used as therapeutics or in testing.

NK: It’s common knowledge that viruses evolve over time. Has the COVID-19 virus evolved already? What does this mean in terms of developing a vaccine, ie how long will a vaccine be relevant?

ER: SARS-CoV-2 is like SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV in being a betacoronavirus: these have big single-stranded RNA genomes – the biggest, in fact – and have evolved a more accurate enzyme (RNA-dependent RNA polymerase) to replicate it than influenza virus has, for example.

Thus, they evolve or rather mutate with every cycle of infection, but do so much more slowly than viruses like flu, which still take several years to evolve away from antibody recognition.

Several lineages of the virus have emerged since it started, but these are still very closely related to one another, show no differences in ability to cause disease, and almost certainly are not different immunogenically or in terms of eliciting an immune response.

It means a single vaccine could be good for years, unlike the case for flu.

NK: Lastly, are people who have contracted COVID-19 and recovered from it immune to it now? 

ER: It is presumed so. The original SARS-CoV elicited antibodies that persist in people to this day, from 17 years ago.

Read the first interview with Professor Rybicki for answers to the most frequently asked questions regarding COVID-19. His blog post “Plant-made vaccines and reagents for SARS-CoV-2 in South Africa” also makes for excellent reading on a possible vaccine.


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UCT’s response to COVID-19

COVID-19 is a global pandemic that caused President Cyril Ramaphosa to declare a national disaster in South Africa on 15 March 2020 and to implement a national lockdown from 26 March 2020. UCT is taking the threat of infection in our university community extremely seriously, and this page will be updated with the latest COVID-19 information. Please note that the information on this page is subject to change depending on current lockdown regulations.

Minister of Health, Dr Joe Phaahla, has in June 2022 repealed some of South Africa’s remaining COVID-19 regulations: namely, sections 16A, 16B and 16C of the Regulations Relating to the Surveillance and the Control of Notifiable Medical Conditions under the National Health Act. We are now no longer required to wear masks or limit gatherings. Venue restrictions and checks for travellers coming into South Africa have now also been removed.

In July 2022, the University of Cape Town (UCT) revised its approach to managing the COVID-19 pandemic on UCT campuses in 2022.
Read the latest document available on the UCT policies web page.

 

Campus communications

 
2022

Adjusting to our new environment 16:50, 23 June 2022
VC Open Lecture and other updates 17:04, 13 April 2022
Feedback from UCT Council meeting of 12 March 2022 09:45, 18 March 2022
UCT Council
March 2022 graduation celebration 16:45, 8 March 2022
Report on the meeting of UCT Council of 21 February 2022 19:30, 21 February 2022
UCT Council
COVID-19 management 2022 11:55, 14 February 2022
Return to campus arrangements 2022 11:15, 4 February 2022

UCT Community of Hope Vaccination Centre

On Wednesday, 20 July, staff from the University of Cape Town’s (UCT) Faculty of Health Sciences came together with representatives from the Western Cape Government at the UCT Community of Hope Vaccination Centre at Forest Hill Residence to acknowledge the centre’s significance in the fight against COVID-19 and to thank its staff for their contributions. The centre opened on 1 September 2021 with the aim of providing quality vaccination services to UCT staff, students and the nearby communities, as well as to create an opportunity for medical students from the Faculty of Health Sciences to gain practical public health skills. The vaccination centre ceased operations on Friday, 29 July 2022.

With the closure of the UCT Community of Hope Vaccination Centre, if you still require access to a COVID-19 vaccination site please visit the CovidComms SA website to find an alternative.

 

“After almost a year of operation, the University of Cape Town’s (UCT) Community of Hope Vaccination Centre, located at the Forest Hill residence complex in Mowbray, will close on Friday, 29 July 2022. I am extremely grateful and proud of all staff, students and everyone involved in this important project.”
– Vice-Chancellor Prof Mamokgethi Phakeng

With the closure of the UCT Community of Hope Vaccination Centre, if you still require access to a COVID-19 vaccination site please visit the CovidComms SA website to find an alternative.


Thank You UCT Community

Frequently asked questions

 

Global Citizen Asks: Are COVID-19 Vaccines Safe & Effective?

UCT’s Institute of Infectious Disease and Molecular Medicine (IDM) collaborated with Global Citizen, speaking to trusted experts to dispel vaccine misinformation.



If you have further questions about the COVID-19 vaccine check out the FAQ produced by the Desmond Tutu Health Foundation (DTHF). The DTHF has developed a dedicated chat function where you can ask your vaccine-related questions on the bottom right hand corner of the website.

IDM YouTube channel | IDM website
 

 

“As a contact university, we look forward to readjusting our undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in 2023 as the COVID-19 regulations have been repealed.”
– Prof Harsha Kathard, Acting Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Teaching and Learning

We are continuing to monitor the situation and we will be updating the UCT community regularly – as and when there are further updates. If you are concerned or need more information, students can contact the Student Wellness Service on 021 650 5620 or 021 650 1271 (after hours), while staff can contact 021 650 5685.

 

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