Hyderabad University faculty working on coronavirus vaccine

The candidates are against all the structural and non- structural proteins of novel coronavirus-2 (2019-nCoV) for experimental testing, a varsity press release said.

The faculty at the Biochemistry deparment at the University of Hyderabad are working on potential vaccine candidates, called T cell epitopes to fight COVID-19, the UoH said here on Friday.

Vaccination will take some time due to the need for further work on these candidate epitopes. (REUTERS file)

The candidates are against all the structural and non- structural proteins of novel coronavirus-2 (2019-nCoV) for experimental testing, a varsity press release said. These vaccine candidates are small coronaviral peptides, molecules which are used by cells to trigger an immune response to destroy cells harbouring these viral peptides, the release said.

Using powerful immunoinformatics approaches with computational softwares, Seema Mishra, a faculty member designed these potential epitopes in a manner that can be used to vaccinate entire populations, it said.

Usually, vaccine discovery takes 15 years, but the powerful computational tools helped in quickly enlisting these vaccine candidates in about 10 days, UoH said.

Right now, the best defense to prevent further infections is social distancing.

Vaccination will take some time due to the need for further work on these candidate epitopes, the release said.