The U.S. Army is expected to announce the development of a vaccine to fight against various COVID-19 variants.
Scientists at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research have been researching for almost two years, according to Defense One.
Animal trials were completed earlier this year at the research facility with the spike ferritin nanoparticle vaccine, or SpFN.
Early-stage human trials ended this month and the results are currently under final review, Dr. Kayvon Modjarrad told the outlet.
“It’s very exciting to get to this point for our entire team and I think for the entire Army as well,” Modjarrad said.
Defense One had reported that the new vaccine was effective against all COVID variants, but WRAIR clarified that “The Spike Ferritin Nanoparticle platform is designed to protect against an array of SARS-CoV-2 variants and SARS-origin variants but was not tested on the Omicron variant”.
The SpFN vaccine uses a soccer ball-shaped protein with 24 faces, allowing scientists to attach the spikes of multiple coronavirus variants on different faces, according to Defense One.
Modjarrad told the outlet that the rapid spread of both the Delta and Omicron variants made the first trials take longer than expected.
“We need to evaluate it in the real-world setting and try to understand how does the vaccine perform in much larger numbers of individuals who have already been vaccinated with something else initially…or already been sick,” he said.
The first trials used subjects who had neither been vaccinated nor previously infected with COVID-19. Now, they need to test the vaccine with people who were previously vaccinated or sick.
