Novavax COVID-19 Vaccine: How Does It Work?
In the battle against Covid-19, more than 330 million vaccines have been given out. But a new vaccine candidate is about to enter the arena. Novavax recently completed its final studies and will submit an application to the FDA and other regulatory agencies in the coming weeks.
The new candidate uses a different mechanism to elicit immune responses than existing vaccines. However, it is still successful against non-variant types of the virus.
How Does Novavax’s Vaccine Work? Using Moth Cells
Since the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID-19, has “spike proteins” on its surface, scientists worldwide easily recognized it as a coronavirus when the sequence was published online.
Coronaviruses have huge protrusions on their spikes, says the study “Structure, Function, and Evolution of Coronavirus Spike Proteins.” Hence, COVID-19 seems to have the appearance of crowns. The Latin word for “crown” is the corona.
The virus uses these knob-shaped structures to bind to human cells and infect them. The ability of a vaccine to help protect against COVID-19 depends on the immune system’s ability to identify and “remember” certain spike proteins.
However, how different coronavirus vaccines accomplish this varies.
Click here to read more via The Science Times.
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