Human trials for Virginia-made vaccine possible
When the coronavirus pandemic started taking off in Virginia, Dr. William Petri joined the scrum of researchers nationwide trying to learn more about the virus and develop a vaccine to safeguard against it.
“You have an important problem, you want to do work on it from as many angles as you can,” Petri, vice chair for research at the University of Virginia’s Department of Medicine, told The Virginian-Pilot in March. “The end result we all want is to get a vaccine that protects people.”
Nine months later, Petri’s vaccine has proven 100% effective in mice, and he’s also launched a project studying potential immunotherapy treatment for patients with COVID-19.
Of course, much has changed since he started the research.
Under the federal government’s Operation Warp Speed, vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna are being rolled out — the first Pfizer vaccine in Virginia was administered Dec. 15 in Norfolk.
But Petri never thought the Charlottesville university would be first to market. His team hopes theirs can be a complement to other vaccines, or a better one.
The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines use messenger RNA, a new method that teaches cells how to make a protein that triggers an immune response against the coronavirus. Unlike a traditional vaccine, it does not put a weakened version of the virus inside our bodies.
Petri’s, by contrast, involves mixing what are called adjuvants — substances that can produce immune responses — with the proteins from what you’re immunizing against, to stimulate a potent immune response. It gives people the protein directly, rather than triggering cells to make it like the mRNA does.
“So it’s just two different approaches,” he said. “But the goal is the same, which is to make a high antibody response that should protect against infection.”
It’s designed to elicit very long-lived immunity, something that could prove helpful if the existing vaccines are shorter lasting. That remains to be seen.
Petri said his vaccine is also different because it can be stored at room temperature — unlike Pfizer’s, which requires ultracold temperatures that complicate transport — and given through the nose, no needles required.
A few weeks ago, Petri’s team wrapped up the first test in mice. They gave drops of the vaccine to 10 mice. A control group of another 10 did not receive it.
After being injected with the novel coronavirus, the mice that did not receive the vaccine became severely sick, while all that did showed no signs of illness, Petri said.
“It was a very straightforward experimental result,” he said.
Indoor Biotechnologies of Charlottesville produces the protein the group needs for the vaccine, and the adjuvants come from the Infectious Diseases Research Institute in Seattle. They’re then assembled at the UVA lab by Dr. Mayuresh Abhyankar, another of the project’s leads.
The adjuvants help switch on receptors that are on cells all over our body, Petri said. “They tell our body they’re being invaded by a microorganism.”
In this way the formulation could be used against any virus — just swap in the right compound.
The mice test is just the first step in moving the vaccine forward, though.
Petri and his colleagues plan to repeat it to verify the results. Then they hope to study how it affects primates, and finally human trials. All that will require hundreds of thousands of dollars. They’ve applied for federal grants and received some funding from local foundations, but will need more to keep going.
“We will not be moving at warp speed,” he said with a laugh.
“It’s different in academic research.”
In addition to working on prevention, Petri is part of a team researching a way to treat patients who end up sick from the virus.
The university collected small plasma samples from about 200 patients admitted there with COVID-19. Researchers found that a cytokine protein called Interleukin 13 was elevated in patients with the infection — the ones with the highest levels were those that ended up on a ventilator — and believe it’s causing much of the resulting lung damage.
The team is now studying whether that’s true in mice, and hope to run a clinical trial testing whether drugs that inhibit the IL-13 protein are beneficial for treating COVID-19.
Meantime, Petri is occasionally called on to work as a physician in the university’s coronavirus unit. It’s helped his research, he said, to see the illness up close.
Even he’s not first in line to get a vaccine, though. Those who get more facetime with the patients, such as nurses, are prioritized. It’s interesting to hear about hesitation from some in the public to get the vaccine, he said, when inside health systems people are “breaking down the door” to get it.
It’s been an extraordinary time inside the laboratory, he added.
Studying infectious diseases, “I’d prepared my entire career for this. For me personally to use what I know to help is profoundly rewarding.”