A CORONAVIRUS vaccine candidate developed by scientists in Southampton could begin clinical trials in the city in the autumn.

A £1.9 million funding boost from Innovate UK, the Government’s innovation agency, has provided support for a collaboration between Cambridge spin-out company DIOSynVax, the University of Cambridge and the University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust.

The cash will allow the team to take the vaccine candidate to clinical trial.

This will take place at the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Southampton Clinical Research Facility and could begin as early as autumn this year.

Professor Jonathan Heeney, founder of DIOSynVax, said: “Our approach involves 3D computer modelling of the SARS-CoV-2 [the virus that causes Covid-19] structure.

“It uses information on the virus itself as well as its relatives – SARS, MERS and other coronaviruses carried by animals that threaten to ‘spill over’ to humans again to cause future human epidemics.

“We’re looking for chinks in its armour, crucial pieces of the virus that we can use to construct the vaccine to direct the immune response in the right direction.

“Ultimately we aim to make a vaccine that will not only protect from SARS-CoV-2, but also other related coronaviruses that may spill over from animals to humans."

“Our strategy includes targeting those domains of the virus’s structure that are absolutely critical for docking with a cell, while avoiding the parts that could make things worse.

“What we end up with is a mimic, a synthetic part of the virus minus those non-essential elements that could trigger a bad immune response.”

As reported, the research team has used banks of genetic sequences of all known coronaviruses to develop their vaccine candidate called DIOS-CoVax2.

They have developed libraries of computer-generated antigen structures that can train the immune system to target key regions of the virus and system to make good anti-viral responses. These immune responses include neutralising antibodies, which block virus infection, and T-cells, which remove virus-infected cells.