• HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
Saturday, August 2, 2025
BIOENGINEER.ORG
No Result
View All Result
  • Login
  • HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
        • Lecturer
        • PhD Studentship
        • Postdoc
        • Research Assistant
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
  • HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
        • Lecturer
        • PhD Studentship
        • Postdoc
        • Research Assistant
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
No Result
View All Result
Bioengineer.org
No Result
View All Result
Home NEWS Science News Immunology

Closing in on a COVID-19 vaccine

Bioengineer by Bioengineer
April 3, 2020
in Immunology
Reading Time: 2 mins read
0
Share on FacebookShare on TwitterShare on LinkedinShare on RedditShare on Telegram

Rapid progress in South Australia

IMAGE

Credit: Flinders University

South Australian researchers working with Oracle Cloud technology and vaccine technology developed by local company Vaxine Pty Ltd are testing a vaccine candidate against the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic.

The team is headed by Nikolai Petrovsky, Flinders University Professor and Research Director at Vaxine.

His team has tapped Oracle for technical collaboration, access to an expanded research community, and cloud infrastructure that helped enable the rapid design of the novel COVID-19 vaccine candidate.

“The vaccine has progressed into animal testing in the US and, once we confirm it is safe and effective, will then be advanced into human trials,” says Professor Petrovsky – stressing expectations shouldn’t be elevated until all testing is completed.

The latest cloud-based technology provided by Oracle enabled the team to “dramatically speed up our ability to analyse the COVID-19 virus and use this information to design the vaccine candidate”.

“As soon as the genomic sequence of COVID-19 became available in January, we immediately used this, combined with our previous experience in developing a SARS coronavirus vaccine, to characterise the key viral attachment molecule called the spike protein,” Professor Petrovsky says.

“We used computer models of the spike protein and its human receptor, ACE2, to identify how the virus was infecting human cells, and then were able to design a vaccine to block this process,” he says.

Flinders University Associate Professor Dimitar Sajkov, a respiratory physician in South Australia, has been involved in conducting previous human trials of the team’s pandemic vaccines and hopes to similarly lead clinical trials of this new COVID-19 vaccine candidate.

“The team has exploited the very latest technologies, including AI, advanced manufacturing and Cloud computing to accelerate vaccine design, shaving years off normal development timeframes,” Professor Sajkov says.

“We achieved great results with Vaxine’s swine flu vaccine developed during the 2009 swine flu pandemic, where we commenced clinical trials of a vaccine within three months of discovery of the virus. We hope to achieve similar results with their COVID-19 vaccine candidate when it is ready for human testing” he says.

###

Media Contact
Professor Nikolai Petrovsky
[email protected]

Tags: Clinical TrialsImmunology/Allergies/AsthmaInfectious/Emerging DiseasesMedicine/HealthMicrobiologyVaccines
Share12Tweet8Share2ShareShareShare2

Related Posts

IMAGE

UMass Amherst grad student awarded fellowship for food allergy research

July 23, 2021
IMAGE

Less-sensitive COVID-19 tests may still achieve optimal results if enough people tested

July 22, 2021

Public trust in CDC, FDA, and Fauci holds steady, survey shows

July 20, 2021

USC study shows male-female differences in immune cell function

July 19, 2021
Please login to join discussion

POPULAR NEWS

  • Blind to the Burn

    Overlooked Dangers: Debunking Common Myths About Skin Cancer Risk in the U.S.

    60 shares
    Share 24 Tweet 15
  • Neuropsychiatric Risks Linked to COVID-19 Revealed

    42 shares
    Share 17 Tweet 11
  • Dr. Miriam Merad Honored with French Knighthood for Groundbreaking Contributions to Science and Medicine

    46 shares
    Share 18 Tweet 12
  • Study Reveals Beta-HPV Directly Causes Skin Cancer in Immunocompromised Individuals

    38 shares
    Share 15 Tweet 10

About

We bring you the latest biotechnology news from best research centers and universities around the world. Check our website.

Follow us

Recent News

TrueBeam vs. Halcyon: Breast Cancer Radiotherapy Comparison

Magnesium Implants Boost Bone-Immune Health In Vitro

Unmet Supportive Care Needs in Cancer Patients

  • Contact Us

Bioengineer.org © Copyright 2023 All Rights Reserved.

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
No Result
View All Result
  • Homepages
    • Home Page 1
    • Home Page 2
  • News
  • National
  • Business
  • Health
  • Lifestyle
  • Science

Bioengineer.org © Copyright 2023 All Rights Reserved.