IU researcher working on COVID-19 vaccine for infants

John Patton was already working on a dual vaccine. The Indiana University virologist was trying to take the existing rotavirus vaccine and modify it to also protect against norovirus. Then, a new strain of coronavirus started infecting humans. He and his team quickly realized they could help.

"We already knew, kind of, how to do this," he said.

It will still be months before anything Patton and his team produce will be ready for widespread use. It's a frustrating reality, but once the vaccine is available, it could help prevent another COVID-19 pandemic.

"Long term, we need a vaccine for children, so everyone is protected," Patton said.

Before coming to IU, Patton spent nearly two decades working for the National Institutes of Health. The rotavirus vaccine was developed during that time. Through that experience, Patton said he learned a lot about how to design and engineer vaccines.

At IU, he's been using his knowledge of rotavirus to create a vaccine that serves a dual purpose.

Rotavirus infections typically cause fever, vomiting and several days of watery diarrhea. Before the development of a vaccine, most children in the U.S. had been infected with the virus at least once by age 5, according to the Mayo Clinic. Now, between 85% and 90% of infants in the U.S. receive three doses of the oral vaccine before their first birthdays, Patton said.

With that vaccine already established, Patton and his team plan to use reverse genetics to change it and provide immunity from two viruses.

Rotavirus normally makes 12 proteins. Patton and his team can modify the genetic information of the rotavirus so it can make 13 proteins. They do this using something called recombinant DNA technology, essentially making the virus in a lab from scratch.

"You can do that by knowing the sequence of the genome," he said.

The extra rotavirus protein can be re-engineered to be the spike protein from coronavirus, or at least a portion of it.

Those spike proteins are what inspired the name coronavirus. They are also what the virus uses to attach to cells.

Images of the virus show a round structure with projections coming off the surface. Those are the spike proteins. Some people think they look like a crown, which is corona in Spanish.

If someone has developed antibodies for the spike proteins, the virus is neutralized.

"The virus is still there, but it cannot infect a cell," Patton said. "That's how these vaccine approaches work, in general."

Should Patton's idea work, a separate coronavirus vaccine would still need to be developed for older children and adults. That's because older people have either already received the rotavirus vaccine or have likely been exposed to the rotavirus.

"They already have antibodies against rotavirus, which will inactivate the vaccine," Patton said. "It won't work in them."

Getting any coronavirus vaccine to market will take time. First, recombinant strains that are candidates for a vaccine have to be created in a lab. Then, those that pass muster will move on to clinical testing, Patton said.

Private companies, nonprofit foundations or the National Institutes of Health typically help shoulder the burden of clinical testing to make sure any potential vaccine is both safe and effective. After that, the process is turned over to a pharmaceutical company to scale up production.

To vaccinate all the newborns in just the U.S. would require tens of millions of doses, Patton said. For the rest of the world?

"That's a lot of people and a lot of doses," he said.

The advantage of modifying an existing vaccine is that methods to deliver and administer it already exist. But even with that infrastructure, it's still a long process.

"We hope to know by the second half of the year if it's producing an immune response," Patton said.

And that's why science can be so frustrating. It never seems to happen as fast as people, including scientists, would like. Especially Patton.

He and his team are considered essential, so while many IU employees work from home, they have continued coming to campus. Patton, four graduate students, two post-doctoral students and one undergraduate student take all the precautions they can. Only two or three come in at a time and they try to stay far apart.

Patton worries about his team, but he knows there are others at greater risk. His daughter and son-in-law are both medical doctors in Indianapolis. His son-in-law works in a hospital emergency room.

"I can be a little safe in my office or at home," Patton said. "But the reality is, there are people trying to battle this virus one on one."

Contact Michael Reschke at 812-331-4370, mreschke@heraldt.com or follow @MichaelReschke on Twitter.