Development of anti-SARS-CoV-2 vaccine using VLPs

The emerging SARS-CoV-2 virus appeared in China, with easy spread and significant lethality. In less than three months of its identification it has already caused more than 30,000 deaths worldwide and with an increasing number of fatalities. As it is a new virus introduced into the human population, there is no immune population; it has easy spread and lethality varies from 1 to 16% according to country, age group and comorbidities. In the absence of a specific vaccine or treatment, the pandemic is paralyzing entire continents. In this project, we aim to use the vaccine platform based on virus-like particles (virus like particles, or VLP) conjugating peptide sequences from SARS-CoV-2 to Q²VLPs and VP1VLPs from Spike protein using them as a mechanism for delivering peptide antigens to the components immune system cells. It is worth mentioning that this project was quickly adapted for the development of an effective and safe vaccine against SARS-CoV2 to the Young Researcher project, Process number: 2019 / 14526-0. Because of this, we are already working on selecting the best antigens to be conjugated to VLPs due to the enormous urgency that this historic moment demands of us.