Research Perspective|Volume 12, Issue 19|pp 18797—18803

Using the common cold virus as a naturally occurring vaccine to prevent COVID-19: Lessons from Edward Jenner

Federica Sotgia¹, Michael P. Lisanti¹

¹Translational Medicine, School of Science, Engineering and Environment (SEE), University of Salford, Greater Manchester, United Kingdom

Received: September 18, 2020Accepted: September 30, 2020Published: October 13, 2020

Copyright: © 2020 Sotgia and Lisanti. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

Three recent papers published in Nature, Science and Cell, all present clear evidence that there is cross-reactive T-cell immunity between human coronaviruses (229E, NL63, OC43, and HKU1), linked with the common cold, and SARS-CoV-2, the causative agent of COVID-19. Can we use this information to design and build a new vaccine based on the less pathogenic, common cold coronaviruses, for the prevention of COVID-19? If we look at the history of medicine and vaccine development, from the point of view of Edward Jenner, the answer just might be yes.