It’s been a little over six years since the Covid-19 pandemic brought the world to a standstill. With seven million losing their lives and communities isolated from each other, the much-awaited deployment of vaccines in late 2020 marked a turning point in the pandemic’s path.

However, problems quickly and predictably arose as new strains of the virus developed during the vaccine rollout. This is because the usual method of vaccine development uses a weak or dead sample or ‘antigen’ from the virus to trigger an immune response in the patient; as the virus changes, so does the vaccine needed, leaving scientists always one step behind the mutating disease.

On Friday (June 5), the announcement of new technology created by the University of Cambridge and biotech spin-out DIOSynVax could spell an end to this problem. In a world first, 39 healthy volunteers have been successfully vaccinated against multiple coronaviruses in just one jab. The difference? This antigen used to trigger patients’ immune responses was designed entirely by artificial intelligence.

Describing the technology as “future-proof”, scientific lead Professor Jonothan Heeney from the Lab of Viral Zoonotics, University of Cambridge’s Department of Veterinary Medicine, said “the constant cycle of chasing the virus variants circulating in humans and updating the vaccines to try to catch up” had been overcome by the research’s success.

“Our vaccines will continue to provide protection against viruses even as they mutate into new strains.”

How the vaccine works

Traditionally, the antigens used in vaccine development come from the virus itself. In this trial, researchers took genetic codes from a range of coronaviruses, and analysed them using AI.

From this analysis, a new ‘super-antigen’ was designed by the AI model, which prompted immune responses from vaccinated patients against the whole family of viruses, regardless of whether mutations occurred.

In the Phase I trial, published in the Journal of Infection, the 39 healthy volunteers aged between 18 and 50 were given the DNA vaccine over a two-year period between 2021 and 2023. The vaccine was administered needle-free, using a high-pressure stream of liquid to push the vaccine blueprints directly into skin cells.

The Phase II trial is expected to include at least 200 participants.

A one-jab wonder?

The researchers involved say the trial’s success could turn vaccine development on its head, where instead of producing vaccines reactively to the mutations, vaccines could be developed pre-emptively, protecting populations against pandemics before they even begin.

Beyond providing patients with broad protection from virus variants, researchers also found that the jab sparked immune responses to related bat viruses, which could potentially jump from animals to humans.

With nine zoonotic viruses currently on the World Health Organization’s pandemic watch list, and scientific evidence overwhelmingly pointing to the Covid-19 pandemic having zoonotic origins, this development could be critical in preventing a pandemic like the one we saw six years ago.

The team at Cambridge are also looking to advance on a bird flu vaccine, which Professor Heeney described as a “big global threat”.

However Paul Hunter, Professor of Medicine from the University of East Anglia in the UK emphasised to CGTN Europe that caution still needed to be exercised.

“This vaccine that they’ve developed isn’t something that will work against ebola or dengue or other viruses. So it’s a much more restrictive vaccine than the headlines would suggest.”

An ebola epidemic is currently gripping the Democratic Republic of Congo, caused by the rare Bundibugyo strain. There have been around 380 confirmed cases in DR Congo, including 60 deaths, plus another 15 confirmed cases and one death in neighbouring Uganda.