CORBEVAX Subunit Vaccine Pioneered for COVID-19 in Low Income Countries

     This article in NPR Goats & Soda (https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2022/01/05/1070046189/a-texas-team-comes-up-with-a-covid-vaccine-that-could-be-a-global-game-changer) discusses a new COVID-19 vaccine called CORBEVAX that is currently being manufactured for distribution in low and middle income countries such as India. CORBEVAX is not an mRNA vaccine, which makes it different from the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines that are very common in the United States.

    CORBEVAX is a subunit vaccine, which means that it uses proteins from the SARS-CoV-2 virus in order to mount an immune response. Other highly successful vaccines that make use of this technology are the Hepatitis B vaccine and the Human Papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine. 

    Interestingly, researchers Peter Hotez and Maria Elena Bottazzi from the Baylor College of Medicine began developing this vaccine during the first pandemic of SARS in the early 2000s. As we discussed in class, the global response to SARS was mounted very effectively, causing the outbreak to decline quickly. As a result, their vaccine was never tested. I thought this was really interesting, and I wonder how common it is that vaccines are created and then never tested/used because the spread of the virus decreases to such a large extent within the population. For instance, were U.S. scientists developing vaccines for the recent outbreaks of Zika/Ebola in case they ever spread rapidly through our country? Or do we tend to be more reactive than proactive, waiting to make vaccines until it’s almost too late?

    When the COVID-19 pandemic began, the scientists decided to see if they could use the same technology for SARS-CoV-2. Interestingly, though, the scientists said that no one wanted to fund or support their work because subunit vaccines were not as “innovative” as the mRNA vaccines that companies like Pfizer and Moderna were making. This statement confused me because I don’t understand why a vaccine technology would need to be “innovative” in order for people to want to support it. I would think that people would be more wary of novel vaccine technologies. As we learned in class, subunit vaccines for HPV and Hepatitis B are highly effective in preventing disease, so why would funders hesitate to support a technology that they know has worked well in the past? 

    Eventually, the researchers were able to test the vaccine. The vaccine has high efficacy (90%) against the original strain and almost as high efficacy for the delta variant (80%). Trials are currently underway to see whether it maintains this efficacy against omicron. One thing I learned from this article was that subunit vaccines are harder to modify than mRNA vaccines, which means that it is more difficult to adapt the vaccine technology when new strains of the virus become more common in the population. I think this lack of adaptability may pose a problem for combatting SARS-CoV-2, especially given how quickly new variants seem to be arriving. 

    One of the most important benefits of this vaccine, in my opinion, is its low cost. Each dose costs only about $1.50, which is much more accessible than the $15-20 per dose that the United States is currently paying for the Pfizer/Moderna vaccines. Furthermore, Hotez and Bottazzi have decided to allow any manufacturer to view the “recipe” for the vaccine, meaning that it can easily be manufactured worldwide. According to the NPR article, Pfizer and Moderna have not been transparent in this regard. I think the concept of intellectual property and patents when it comes to vaccines is really interesting, especially when thinking about who stands to benefit from the production and gatekeeping of these vaccines.

-Sophia Nesamoney