Australian scientists produce quick and safe coronavirus vaccine method

Australian scientists have created a new method for synthesising vaccines that will enable the quicker and safer production of vital immunisations.

Picture: Boris Roesseler/Getty

Scientists have created a new method for synthesising vaccines that will enable quicker and safer production of vital immunisations for disease such as tuberculosis and, potentially, COVID-19.

The researchers, led by Sydney University professor Richard Payne and Centenary Institute professor Warwick Britton, have become the first in the world to synthesise a bacterial vaccine with a built-in enhancer as a single molecule.

Early trials on a tuberculosis vaccine made using the method, which fuses the bacterial protein to an enhancer, or adjuvant, using synthetic chemistry and allows vaccines to be inhaled rather than injected, has generated a powerful immune response in mice.

For vaccines to provide any protection, the body’s immune cells need to encounter the protein antigen and the adjuvant simultaneously, which is why they need to be fused together.

Sydney University research associate Anneliese Ashhurst, who was the joint first author on the paper, said the technology allowed vaccines to be produced more efficiently and without the use of live pathogens.

“Protein vaccines tend to be very safe and we can use them in people with a compromised immune system,” Dr Ashhurst said.

She said the fight against tuberculosis, which kills 1.4 million per year, could be especially aided by a vaccine that is inhaled through a tool similar to an asthma puffer.