University of Hyderabad faculty develops possible COVID-19 vaccine

With Indian scientists and researchers making strides in the study of coronavirus, a faculty at the Biochemistry department at the University of Hyderabad (UoH) has come up with what is touted to be a potential vaccinee called T-cell epitopes for the pandemic virus.

The potential vaccine candidates called T-cell epitopes are aimed at working against all the structural and non-structural proteins of the novel coronavirus.

They are tiny coronaviral peptide molecules that are used by cells to trigger an immune response and destroy cells harbouring the peptides. Using powerful immunoinformatics approaches with computational software, the faculty member, Dr Seema Mishra, designed these potential epitopes in a way that they pose no cross-reactivity to human cells and can be used to vaccinate an entire population.

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UoH said that usually, vaccine discovery takes 15 years, but the powerful computational tools helped in quickly enlisting these vaccine candidates in about 10 days.

The research has been shared with the scientific community, the University said on Friday (March 27).

But in the given situation, the best defense to prevent further infections is social distancing as these T-cell epitopes are yet to be tested further for their effectiveness, UoH added.