{"id":126461,"date":"2021-08-18T23:22:17","date_gmt":"2021-08-19T06:22:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/08\/version-2-0-of-covid-19-vaccine-quickly-kicks-immune-system-into-high-gear"},"modified":"2021-08-18T23:22:17","modified_gmt":"2021-08-19T06:22:17","slug":"version-2-0-of-covid-19-vaccine-quickly-kicks-immune-system-into-high-gear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/08\/version-2-0-of-covid-19-vaccine-quickly-kicks-immune-system-into-high-gear","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Version 2.0\u2019 of COVID-19 vaccine quickly kicks immune system into high gear"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/version-2-0-of-covid-19-vaccine-quickly-kicks-immune-system-into-high-gear2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Let the record show that the current COVID-19 vaccines work, and they work well. But what is the next step in vaccine development, especially amid increasing rates of breakthrough infections and emergence of variants of concern?<\/p>\n<p>In a new Northwestern Medicine study in <a href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/tags\/mice\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">mice<\/a>, researchers took one of the current vaccines, which is based on the novel coronavirus\u2019s infamous <a href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/tags\/spike\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">spike<\/a> protein, and added a different antigen, the nucleocapsid protein, to form a new, potentially improved version of the COVID vaccine. The nucleocapsid protein, which is an internal RNA-binding protein, may help kick the immune system into high gear much more quickly than the spike protein is capable of since it is among the most rapidly and highly expressed proteins in coronaviruses.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAt this point, we\u2019re just trying to figure out \u2018What should the 2.0 vaccines be?\u2019\u201d said senior and corresponding study author Pablo Penaloza-MacMaster, an assistant professor of microbiology-immunology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. \u201cIt seems like adding nucleocapsid to the vaccine renders it more protective, relative to having only the spike.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Let the record show that the current COVID-19 vaccines work, and they work well. But what is the next step in vaccine development, especially amid increasing rates of breakthrough infections and emergence of variants of concern? In a new Northwestern Medicine study in mice, researchers took one of the current vaccines, which is based on [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":534,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1522],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-126461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-innovation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/534"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=126461"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126461\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=126461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=126461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=126461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}