Researchers Of Odisha’s IISER Berhampur Develop Vaccine To Counter ‘All Variants’ Of Coronavirus

Berhampur: A team of Indian scientists from Berhampur’s Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) in Odisha and Kazi Nazrul University (KNU) in Asansol claim to have developed a vaccine that will be effective against ‘all variants’ of the coronavirus.

This will be a major breakthrough in the global fight against COVID-19 pandemic as the dreaded virus has been mutating frequently and none of the vaccines developed around the world has been found to counter all strains.

The peptide vaccine has been developed by IISER Berhampur’s Dr Malay Kumar Rana, Assistant Professor, Chemical Science Department, PhD students Partha Sarathi Sen Gupta and Saroj Kumar Panda, and KNU’s Abhigyan Choudhury and Suprabhat Mukherjee.

Their research will be published in the Journal of Molecular Liquids.

The vaccine was found to be highly stable, antigenic and immunogenic, the researchers claimed.

“In this study, we employed immunoinformatic approaches to design AbhiSCoVac — a multi-epitope multi-target chimeric peptide that would be able to generate protective immunity against all six virulent members of the family hCoV-229E, hCoV-HKU1, hCoV-OC43, SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV as well as SARS-CoV-2,” the researchers said.

The researchers will seek permission from Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) for clinical trials of the vaccine.