Viruses like SARS-CoV-2 use sugar molecules to hide from the immune system, but scientists at Scripps Research have designed a universal coronavirus vaccine that strips these sugars and exposes a stable, rarely mutating part of the spike protein. This approach triggered strong immune responses in
Mmm I’m interested to see how the human trials go. It’s an interesting idea. Remove the sugars that block a conserved target so you generate antibodies to said conserved target. It’s odd to me that this works as well against wild virus that doesn’t have the sugars removed. Mechanistically, I’d assume the sugars still block that conserved target in wild virus so the antibodies targeting other less conserved parts are still doing the heavy lifting but then you wouldn’t have the cross recognition…idk.