Glycan-Targeting Novel Vaccine Shows Promise for Vast Virus Protection

A new vaccine has been presented at the 2025 American Chemical Society Digital Meeting: a universal vaccine that targets the virus that causes COVID-19 and the sugar molecules that coronaviruses use to hide from the host immune system. Chemistry professor Chi-Huey Wong presented the results at the ACS Digital Meeting and published two articles simultaneously in Journal of the American Chemical Society on enzymatic glycosylation and galactosyltransferase.

Wong’s team at The Scripps Research Institute chose to target the low-mutation region of the coronavirus molecule, which is within the stalk region of the virus’s spike protein and is coated with glycans, or chains of sugar molecules. These glycans prevent antibodies from recognizing and inactivating the virus.

The research team created a low-sugar vaccine that removes the protective glycans and produces antibodies to specifically target the low-mutation stalk region via enzymatic digestion of the glycans. “We also found that deletion of the sugar coat to expose the highly conserved epitopes elicited broadly protective antibody and T cell responses against the virus and different variants,” the team noted.

Of note, the vaccine’s effectiveness targets more than one coronavirus at a time, allowing patients to receive a single shot that protects against multiple infectious viruses. In animal studies, the vaccine produced more diverse antibodies with higher titers.

In addition to the team’s work on vaccines that target coronaviruses, the team is also applying this vaccine technique to treat various cancers, as discussed in the two simultaneous publications. “Furthermore, the Fc-glycans on the antibody can be engineered to improve antibody-mediated killing,” they noted.

References

Wong CH. Development of low-sugar universal vaccines glycoengineered antibodies with improved Fc-mediated killing. American Chemical Society 2025 Digital Meeting. March 21-27, 2025.