NIH Reporter #4P01AI167966-02

Core C: Viral Evolution

This award funds the development of tools to engineer vaccines targeting a broad range of coronaviruses by analyzing viral protein mutations and antibody responses to inform vaccine design.

Description

The Viral Evolution Core will develop tools to inform the engineering of vaccines that broadly target coronaviruses that pose a pandemic risk. To do this, the core will use deep mutational scanning to define the biochemical and functional properties of RBDs and spikes across the full evolutionary span of sarbecoviruses and merbecoviruses, and systematically map how these proteins are targeted by vaccine-elicited antibody immunity. The project includes measuring receptor-binding properties of sarbecovirus and merbecovirus RBDs, developing a system to measure mutations' effects on spike proteins, and quantifying binding breadth and robustness of vaccine-elicited antibodies.

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