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UFS research team contributes to COVID-19 vaccine development

31 March 2020 | Story Leonie Bolleurs | Photo Supplied

UFS Covid-19 vaccine research team — Prof Robert Bragg and members of the Veterinary Biotechnology research group believe that finding a vaccine for COVID-19 will not be a ‘quick fix’. From the left are: Prof Bragg, Samantha McCarlie, Liese Kilian, and Dr Charlotte Boucher-van Jaarsveld. The photo was taken during the World Veterinary Poultry Association congress in Thailand in 2019.

On 31 March 2020, there were 804 061 coronavirus cases and 39 064 deaths globally due to the outbreak. According to media reports, there is still no licensed vaccine for COVID-2019 – the cause of our current global health emergency.

Prof Robert Bragg, researcher at the University of the Free State (UFS), says this is without a doubt the most pressing research need in the world today.

The Veterinary Biotechnology research group in the Department of Microbial, Biochemical, and Food Biotechnology at the UFS recently submitted an article for publication on the design of a possible COVID-19 vaccine, based on work they have done on infectious bronchitis virus (also a coronavirus). The article, authored by the group of which Prof Bragg is a member, is titled: A sub-unit vaccine produced in 'Yarrowia lipolytica' against COVID-19: Lessons learnt from infectious bronchitis virus.

The research group, consisting of researchers and postgraduate students, is mostly looking at strategies for improved disease control, mainly in avian species, through vaccine development, treatment, and biosecurity.

Prof Bragg says their main aim with this study was to get the research out there so that the bigger pharmaceutical companies could take up the design of a possible COVID-19 vaccine and assist with the development of a vaccine.

He says the research group’s role in this lengthy process would be to express the protein, which could be used in the development of a possible vaccine. “Thereafter, it will have to be taken up by a vaccine manufacturer to get the vaccine made and to the market.”

Developing a vaccine
Liese Kilian, a member of the research group, finished writing up her MSc thesis in Microbiology in the UFS Department of Microbial, Biochemical, and Food Biotechnology in December 2019 – the same time that COVID-19 originated in China. She has been working on the development of an edible sub-unit vaccine against the infectious bronchitis virus (IBV), which is a widespread avian coronavirus. This virus is specific to poultry and is different from COVID-19.

Kilian’s project was conducted under the supervision of Prof Bragg and Dr Charlotte Boucher-van Jaarsveld. Dr Boucher-van Jaarsveld is a research fellow in the university’s Department of Microbial, Biochemical and Food Biotechnology.

Kilian, with the assistance of Samantha Mc Carlie, currently a master’s student in the research group, substituted the genetic code of the IBV with the genetic code of the COVID-19 virus, which were already published at that stage. Thus, a gene for the development of a possible sub-unit vaccine against the S1 spike protein of COVID-19 was developed for expression in the same yeast strain used to express the spike protein of IBV. A sub-unit vaccine can be described as part of a pathogen, triggering an immune response against the pathogen from which it is derived.

After Killian successfully developed the gene for this study, she expressed the S1 spike protein of the IBV in a yeast-based expression system developed by the research group. Dr Boucher-van Jaarsveld says this simply means that the yeast takes up the foreign genetic material (viral gene) into its own genetic make-up and makes more of this protein as if it is part of the yeast’s normal material.

“The images of COVID-19 are being shown constantly in the media and the ‘spikes’ can be seen on all of these images. These spikes are very typical for all coronaviruses and there is some level of similarity between the structure of these spikes in many of the coronaviruses,” Prof Bragg adds.

According to the World Health Organisation, the spike protein is a promising candidate for a sub-unit vaccine due to its immunogenicity and safety, as well as manufacturing and stability considerations during large-scale development.

Prof Bragg says there are many different expression systems that are widely used. Producing the sub-unit vaccine in a yeast species is beneficial for the work they are doing. A yeast expression system is favourable as large-scale production, is less expensive compared to mammalian cell lines, and can be applied as an edible vaccine.

“The technology to grow massive volumes of yeast are also very well established. This, after all, is how beer is made!” Prof Bragg says. Dr Boucher-van Jaarsveld adds: “The expression of an antigen is not necessarily just geared towards vaccines but can also be used in the development of diagnostic tests to screen populations for infections.”

Working with other researchers
“Now that the situation is all but out of control, we maybe need to investigate the possibilities of working with other key researchers at the UFS as well as other universities in South Africa to develop the vaccine or diagnostic reagents locally. Discussions on this aspect are already underway.”

Several other universities in South Africa are also working to find a cure for the virus. Government availed funding for more research on the matter. According to Higher Education, Science and Technology Minister, Blade Nzimande, the University of Cape Town, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, as well as the Vaccines Institute of Southern Africa are working on the development of a vaccine.

Prof Bragg expressed the hope of obtaining funding for this work. “Because without funding, we will not be able to do anything with this data,” he says. They are currently investigating different funding options.

“The sooner we start on the development of a vaccine, the sooner there will be one, but it will not be a ‘quick fix’. It must be stressed that, even if vaccine development is fast-tracked through the regulatory bodies, it will take many months (if not years) to move from the laboratory to the first human experimentation. It will take even longer before any human vaccine can be rolled out,” says Prof Bragg.

News Archive

Open letter from Prof Jonathan Jansen to all UFS students

2014-02-22

Dear Students of the University of the Free State

In the past four years there has emerged a new consensus on the three campuses of the University of the Free State (UFS) about the things that divide us – such as racism, sexism and homophobia. Students and campus leaders have worked hard to develop this new consensus in residences and in the open spaces on campus. There can be no doubt that new bonds of friendship have developed across the markers of race, ethnicity, class, religion and sexual orientation. I bear witness to these new solidarities every day on the campus.

You chose a white student to head up the transformation portfolio on the SRC. You chose a black captain to head up the university’s first team in rugby. You chose a white “prime” as head of residence to lead a predominantly black men’s residence. You chose a South African woman of Indian descent as Rag Queen and last week, a black student from Cape Town as the men’s Rag winner—choices not possible and never made before in our campus history. Many of you have intimate friends who come from different social or cultural or religious backgrounds. You learn together, share rooms together, pray together and party together. In other words, in the day to day workings of this university campus, you have demonstrated to campus, city and country that we can overcome the lingering effects of racism and other maladies in this new generation. You have helped create a university community inclusive of people of diverse religions, abilities, class and sexual orientation.

I have said this repeatedly that from time to time this new consensus will be tested – when a minority of students, and they are a small and dwindling minority, still act as if these are the days of apartheid. And when that consensus is tested as it was this week, and as it will be tested in the future, only then we will be able to assess the strength and durability of our progress in creating a new South African campus culture of human togetherness based on respect, dignity and embrace.

The real test of our leadership, including student leadership, is how we respond when our transformation drive is threatened.

Let me say this: I have absolute faith in you, as students of this great university, to stand together in your condemnation of these vile acts of violence and to move together in your determination to maintain the momentum for the Human Project of the University of the Free State. We have come too far to allow a few criminals to derail what you have built together in recent years.

There will, no doubt, be unscrupulous people on all sides of the political spectrum wanting to milk this tragedy for their own narrow purposes. There will be false information, rumours and exaggerations by those who wish to inflame a bad situation to gain mileage for their agendas. That is inevitable in a country that is still so divided.

I ask you, through all of this, to keep perspective. Two or ten or even twenty students behaving badly do not represent 30,000 students; a minority of violent and hateful persons do not represent the ideals, ambitions and commitments of the majority. At the same time, let us be realistic – anyone who thinks you can drive transformation without resistance clearly does not understand the difficult process of change.

The events of the week remind us, however, that we still have a long road to walk in deepening social and academic transformation at our university. Yes, we have invested hundreds of hours in training and mentorship; we have created new structures – such as the Institute for Reconciliation and Social Justice – to capture the energy and imagination of students driving transformation; we have created many opportunities for students to study and travel on this and other continents to enable cross-cultural learning; we have established formal and informal opportunities to dialogue about difficult issues on and off campus between students and their leaders; and we crafted new curricula to enable teaching and learning on the big questions of our times.

But this is clearly not enough, and so I have decided on the following immediate next steps:

We will meet for several hours next week to think about how we can deepen the transformation of our university after this terrible incident.
We will arrange a University Assembly on the events of the past week so that we speak with one voice on human wrongs and to re-commit to human rights and we will continue with open forum discussions during the months to come.
We will review the entire spectrum of programmes, from orientation to residence life to the undergraduate curriculum, to determine how effective our interventions really are in reaching all students with respect to basic issues of human rights.
We will review our media and communications strategy to determine how far and deep our messages on human rights travel across all sectors of the university community. In this regard it is important that the campus be blanketed on a regular basis with our condemnation of human wrongs and our commitment to human rights.
We will commission the Institute for Reconciliation and Social Justice to review the events of the past week and make recommendations on how we can improve the campus environment so that all students are protected from harm inside residences, classrooms and in open spaces of the campus.
We will take the questions raised during this week into the academic community and to the general staff of the university so that all personnel also engage with our own roles and responsibilities with respect to campus transformations.
We undertake to make annual report-backs on transformation to all stakeholders in public forums so that students and staff and external communities can track the progress of the university on matters of human rights on campus.

I wish to thank my staff for acting firmly as soon as this tragic event came to our attention. We worked through the night to find and identify the perpetrators. We traced the two students and immediately handed them to the police. They were expelled. And throughout this process we offered counselling and support to the victim of this violent act.

The two former students were expelled and will now face justice in the criminal courts. It is hoped that in the course of time they will come to their senses and seek restoration and reconciliation with the student they so callously harmed. They are not part of the university community anymore.

That is the kind of university we are.

Jonathan D Jansen
Vice-Chancellor and Rector
University of the Free State
20 February 2014

Note: The use of the word ‘campus’ refers to all three campuses of the UFS, namely the Bloemfontein Campus, South Campus and Qwaqwa Campus.

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