Coronavirus: Vaccine race sees Aussies go for trifecta

A team of Melbourne researchers has created three vaccine candid­ates for COVID-19 using gene sequencing.

‘I was punching the air’: Monash University post-doctoral fellow Harry Al-Wassiti. Picture: Stuart McEvoy

A team of Melbourne researchers has created three vaccine candid­ates for COVID-19 using gene sequencing­, in an emerging area of science that could unlock the ability of the immune system to fight the coronavirus.

Scientists at the Monash Instit­ute of Pharmaceutical Sciences made the breakthrough, in work that mirrors that of US biopharma Moderna, whose surging stocks sent the US stockmarket soaring this week on the news that its vaccine­ candidate stimulated an effec­t­ive immune response to SARS-CoV-2 in phase 1 human trials.

The Monash vaccine candid­ates use messenger RNA technol­ogy to induce the body to produce the coronavirus’s distinctive spike protein, triggering an immune ­response that they hope will lead to the production of antibodies against the virus.

The technology is part of a new frontier in vaccine development, which is being dubbed the “vaccine equivalent of a space race”.

Monash’s candidates have been developed by a team that ­included two postdoctoral re­search­e­rs working part-time at the university, who helped encode the viable candidates in just four weeks.

Harry Al-Wassiti, a 33-year-old postdoctoral fellow, described the “rush” he felt when he realised he had produced a viable vaccine candidate, together with colleague Estelle Suys.

Experiments on cell samples had proved that the messenger RNA Dr Al-Wassiti and Dr Suys had created was producing antigen, the substance that prompts the body to produce antibodies.

It was a coup for the young pair, who had spent weeks carefully creating strands of genetic mater­ial that they are now injecting into mice in the first test of whether the vaccine candidate — one of three they have produced — will be effecti­ve against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

“I was punching the air,” Dr Al-Wassiti said. “That was a moment of … realisation that we can actual­ly do it.” He had originally struggled to gain access to university in Australia after mig­rating here from Iraq with his family as a 22-year-old, even though he had a pharmacy degree.

The professor in charge of the team, Colin Pouton, says the young researchers have worked tirelessly to help produce the vaccine­ candidate­s. They’re a long way off from human trials, having only just begun animal studies, but their hopes are high. The team believes­ mRNA technology could provide the mechanism for delivering a successful coronavirus vaccine, even though a DNA- or mRNA-based vaccine has never been ­developed before.

Professor Pouton said delivering specially encoded mRNA to the cells in a vaccine could induce the body to produce the corona­virus’s distinct spike proteins, triggering an immune response.

“So mRNA stands for messenger RNA. And that’s the molecule that encodes for the production of proteins, all proteins in our cells.

If you can get it into the human cells then the human cells will make the protein. So they’ll effectively be making part of the virus … cells make the spike protein and display it. And that will allow our immune system to recognise it.”

DNA and mRNA technology are one of the novel approaches to vaccine development being employe­d as about 130 scientific organisations and biopharmas around the world race to produce a viable COVID-19 product.

Kristine Macartney, director of the National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance, said the pace and breadth of vaccine development was extraordinary. “It’s almost nothing short of revolutionary in the fact that we are seeing many of the brightest minds in the world, the most creative­ and innovative minds, putting their efforts toward these developments,” Professor Macartney said.

“It is the vaccine’s equivalent of the space race. It’s testing our brain power and our ability as a species.

“If you take pandemic influenza in 1918, that virus spread unchecked and we all had to become immune through natural infection and millions of lives were lost. Here we don’t want that, we want to beat this virus and suppress it to a level where we can have a healthy, safe globe again.”

Australia is playing a significant role in the effort to develop a COVID-19 vaccine. The CSIRO is doing animal challenge studies for Oxford University’s candidate, as well as another US candidate. The University of Queensland is just weeks away from human trials for its promising vaccine candidate. The Doherty Institute is also working on vac­cine development, along with several other research organisations.

The Monash researchers plan to pass the antiserum they’ll obtain from the mice they’re testing to the Doherty Institute, to check whether the antibodies contained in the serum are neutralising antibodies. That work must be done in a biocontainment facility. Victoria’s is one of only six in the world.

“I think people who are working on mRNA vaccines like ourselves are quietly confident that we’ll be able to get a vaccine,” Professor Pouton said. “But who’s going to succeed first, and how quickly? How many doses will they be able to produce? They are the questions … we’re all very, very hopeful. And there’s enough evidence to suggest that it can work.”