Bulgarian scientists in search of vaccine against COVID-19

The French Pasteur Institute will fund a project of Bulgarian scientists to create a vaccine against COVID-19.

The idea of the scientists at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and the Medical University of Sofia is to find those parts of the virus that will be best recognized by the Balkan peoples.

The scientists start work immediately, but their prototype may be ready within a year. GMO laboratory mice with human receptors will be used for clinical trial purposes.

In addition to all the genetic information, all the proteins that the new virus synthesizes and their role are already known. The direction and speed of their changes is also clear - the result of the adaptation of the virus to humans.

The Pasteur Institute seems to have liked the idea of the Bulgarian scientists.

Assoc. Prof. Andrei Chorbanov, the Laboratory for Experimental Immunology at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences: Our idea is to find such sections of the coronavirus that are identical to those of previous coronaviruses. A very large homology has been discovered between this virus and previous ones that have already passed as pandemics.

Or those sections of the virus that do not change to keep the developed vaccine up to date. All scientists are dedicated to this search, but unlike the rest of us, we will not aim at the most visible part - the spikes of the virus.

Associate Professor Andrei Chorbanov: Everyone is focusing on a spike protein, because it is actually the biggest target, but it is the one that mutates the most.

The team will search for structural proteins from inside the virus, because of low mutational pressure, and because they have sufficient potential to elicit an immune response.

Assoc. Prof. Andrei Chorbanov: When the virus penetrates the cell, the cell literally grinds it and presents it to the immune system as separate components of it. So even if this protein is inside the virus, it will be present inside the immune system.

The development of the scientists is also valuable because of the second important selection - to be well received by the Balkan population.

Associate Professor Andrei Chorbanov: In other words, each population has a genetic prerequisite, which is very much responsible for the individual immune response. So, we are looking for a component of the virus that will be recognized by our population.

Now, the first step will be the chemists at the Medical University of Sofia to integrate all available viral protein data into a software algorithm.

It has to give the most successful molecules that from the digital world will be synthesized in the real. They will be tested first on cells and then on special GMO mice that have the genes for human receptors targeted by the virus.

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