COVID-19, an emerging coronavirus infection: advances and prospects in designing and developing vaccines, immunotherapeutics, and therapeutics

Abstract

The novel coronavirus infection or Coronavirus disease 2019) that emerged from Wuhan, Hubei province of China has spread to many countries worldwide. Efforts have been made to develop vaccines against human coronavirus (CoV) infections such as MERS and SARS in the past decades. However, to date, no licensed antiviral treatment or vaccine exists for MERS and SARS. Most of the efforts for developing CoV vaccines and drugs target the spike glycoprotein or S protein, the major inducer of neutralizing antibodies. Although a few candidates have shown efficacy in in vitro studies, not many have progressed to randomized animal or human trials, hence may have limited use to counter COVID-19 infection. This article highlights ongoing advances in designing vaccines and therapeutics to counter COVID-19 while also focusing on such experiences and advances as made with earlier SARS-and MERS-CoVs, which together could enable efforts to halt this emerging virus infection. ARTICLE HISTORY

COVID-19 - Knowledge, Attitude and Practice among Medical and Non-Medical University Students in Jordan

“…In this study, the findings regarding the knowledge about COVID-19 among the students reflect a good relationship between their deep understanding and the information available about COVID-19 in the literature and media. For example, majority of students knew that fever, cough and dyspnea can be the common clinical manifestation of COVID-19 and have knowledge about the unavailability of specific treatment and vaccines as described previously 13,20 .…”

COVID-19: animals, veterinary and zoonotic links

“…However, accurate exploration requires specific animal models, especially animals with ACE2 receptors similar to those of humans (Andersen et al 2020). Establishing suitable animal models will not only help in understanding the disease process but will also help in developing prophylactics and therapeutics (TBRI 2020;Dhama et al 2020c). Non-human primates are considered to be the appropriate models of human diseases, whereas for exploring etio-pathogenesis of the disease and immune response, other animal models are preferred (TBRI 2020).…”

Immuno-informatics Characterization SARS-CoV-2 Spike Glycoprotein for Prioritization of Epitope based Multivalent Peptide Vaccine

“…In December 2019, a new strain of coronavirus emerged in Wuhan city of Hubei province in China and has since spread globally. The virus belongs to clade B of family Coronaviridae in the order Nidovirales, and genera Betacoronavirus and caused pulmonary disease outbreak [1,2]. It is positive-sense RNA, enveloped and non-segmented virus and named as SARS-CoV-2 as it share 82% sequence identity with SARS coronavirus (SARS-CoV) [3,4].…”