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takyon writes:

Researchers have developed a vaccine that may be effective at preventing many forms of the common cold (rhinovirus):

A mixture of 25 types of inactivated rhinovirus can stimulate neutralizing antibodies against all 25 in mice, and a mixture of 50 types can do the same thing in rhesus macaques. In this paper, antibodies generated in response to the vaccine were tested for their ability to prevent the virus from infecting human cells in culture. However, the vaccines were not tested for their ability to stop animals from getting sick.

"There are no good animal models of rhinovirus replication," Moore says. "The next step would be human challenge models with volunteers, which are feasible because the virus is not very pathogenic."

Emory has optioned the vaccine technology to a startup company, Meissa Vaccines, Inc., which is pursuing a product development plan with support from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases' vaccine manufacturing services.

A polyvalent inactivated rhinovirus vaccine is broadly immunogenic in rhesus macaques (open, DOI: 10.1038/ncomms12838) (DX)

As the predominant aetiological agent of the common cold, human rhinovirus (HRV) is the leading cause of human infectious disease. Early studies showed that a monovalent formalin-inactivated HRV vaccine can be protective, and virus-neutralizing antibodies (nAb) correlated with protection. However, co-circulation of many HRV types discouraged further vaccine efforts. Here, we test the hypothesis that increasing virus input titres in polyvalent inactivated HRV vaccine may result in broad nAb responses. We show that serum nAb against many rhinovirus types can be induced by polyvalent, inactivated HRVs plus alhydrogel (alum) adjuvant. Using formulations up to 25-valent in mice and 50-valent in rhesus macaques, HRV vaccine immunogenicity was related to sufficient quantity of input antigens, and valency was not a major factor for potency or breadth of the response. Thus, we have generated a vaccine capable of inducing nAb responses to numerous and diverse HRV types.

Original Submission