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Covid-19 vaccines are prepared during a vaccination campaign in Spain. (AP Photo/Alvaro Barrientos, File) Nanoengineers have developed Covid-19 vaccine candidates from plants or bacteria. They are also fridge-free — they do not need to be stored at extremely low temperatures.
The vaccines are still in the early stage of development, the University of California, San Diego said in a press release.
In mice, the vaccine candidates triggered high production of neutralising antibodies against SARS-CoV-2, the researchers have reported in a paper published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
The researchers created two vaccine candidates. One is made from a plant virus, called cowpea mosaic virus. The other is made from a bacterial virus, or bacteriophage, called Q beta.
The researchers used cowpea plants and E coli bacteria to grow millions of copies of the plant virus and bacteriophage, respectively, in the form of ball-shaped nanoparticles.
The researchers harvested these nanoparticles and then attached a small piece of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein to the surface.
Source: UC, San Diego
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