Nasal COVID-19 Vaccine Candidate Study Opens

The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) recently announced a Phase 1 trial testing the safety of an experimental nasal vaccine may provide enhanced breadth of protection against emerging variants of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus is now enrolling healthy adults at three sites in the United States.

Announced on July 1, 2024, the NIH is sponsoring the first-in-human trial of the investigational vaccine, which was designed and tested in pre-clinical studies by scientists from NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Laboratory of Infectious Diseases.

The investigational vaccine, MPV/S-2P, uses murine pneumonia virus (MPV) as a vector to deliver a version of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein (S-2P) stabilized in its prefusion conformation. MPV has aan affinity for epithelial cells that line the respiratory tract and may be effective in delivering vaccines to the places where natural coronavirus infections begin.

NIAID Director Jeanne M. Marrazzo, M.D., M.P.H., commented in a press release, “While first-generation COVID-19 vaccines continue to be effective at preventing severe illness, hospitalizations, and death, they are less successful at preventing infection and milder forms of disease."

"With the continual emergence of new virus variants, there is a critical need to develop next-generation COVID-19 vaccines, including nasal vaccines, that could reduce SARS-CoV-2 infections and transmission.”

This is the first NIAID clinical trial to be conducted as part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Project NextGen. More information about the trial is available at clinicaltrials.gov using the identifier NCT06441968.

For the 2024-2025 season, the U.S. CDC has recommended updated COVID-19 vaccines.

Note - Link correction was completed on July 4, 2024.