These Vaccines Will Take Aim at Covid–And Its Entire SARS Lineage

July 26, 2022

(Wired) – Scientists have tried several routes to attack the problem. The narrowest starts with the existing Covid mRNA vaccines and seeks to create updated boosters that target the virus’s most recent variants, an effort that drugmakers Moderna and Pfizer are attempting with Omicron’s progeny. The broadest, most ambitious route is to invent a vaccine that would target the entire coronavirus family, including the merbecoviruses that cause MERS, the embecoviruses responsible for ordinary colds, and the sarbecovirus subgenus that gave rise to both Covid and the original SARS virus that broke out in 2002. But there’s a middle path: a vaccine that would attack just the sarbecoviruses, meaning the Covid virus and all of its future offspring, as well as any new SARS-CoV siblings that might appear in the future. (Read More)