Scientists Work towards Future Pandemic Control

Plymouth University spin-out The Vaccine Group (TVG), are working on a coronavirus vaccine designed to prevent outbreaks similar to the current COVID-19 pandemic, by preventing infections jumping from animals to humans.

Commercialising the work of Dr Michael Jarvis, Associate Professor (Reader) in Virology and Immunology in the University’s School of Biomedical Sciences, TVG has secured more than £9million in funding to progress a  range of vaccines based on benign forms of herpesviruses, which are found in all animals including humans.

Dr Jarvis said:

“As COVID-19 has shown, the spillover of disease from animals to humans can have a very high social, economic and commercial cost globally. Naturally, there has been a swift move into funding the development of human vaccines and therapeutics, but to date we are not aware of any approaches to eliminate COVID-19 in the animal population to prevent future outbreaks or re-emergence of the disease. The animal species involved in emergence of COVID-19 remain unclear. We believe that such a vaccine tool may be vital for control of COVID-19 as well as other emerging coronaviruses. We have therefore started work on a vaccine and will be partnering with the Shanghai Veterinary Research Institute and Kansas State University, with whom we already have close links.”

“By developing vaccines for animals, rather than solely for humans, you are potentially tackling any future outbreaks at source. Development of this particular vaccine has just been started and it is expected to be in animal studies before the end of the year. Although this will be too late for the current outbreak, the diversity of animal reservoirs and genetic variability of COVID-19 and related coronaviruses mean it could give rise to future pandemics. An animal vaccine could help prevent this from happening, although we still don’t know the animal species involved in the spillover of the current COVID-19 into humans,” added Dr Jarvis.

TVG is supported by the University’s commercialisation partner, Frontier IP, and earlier this year the company completed a £680,000 equity fund raise that valued TVG at £9.5million. The funds are being used directly to accelerate technology development.