A research team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the US have advanced a Covid-19 vaccine candidate into preclinical tests in animal models.
Led by professor Christopher Love from MIT’s Koch Institute for Iterative Cancer Research, the team worked to develop preclinical materials for rapid progress of the candidate to clinical trials.
The candidate is said to be a subunit vaccine, which uses a small part of the virus’ protein to stimulate the immune system to detect the virus and prevent infection of host cells.
Commonly, subunit vaccines act by triggering antibodies that attach to and neutralise the virus, helping the body fight the virus.