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How a UT professor helped create the spike protein used in Pfizer and Moderna’s COVID vaccines

Dr. Jason McLellan
Nearly 11 months after the first COVID-19 case was diagnosed in the U.S., pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and Moderna reported preliminary data this week that suggests their vaccine candidates are successful.
Both companies' vaccines rely on a spike protein invented by a team of scientists, led by Dr. Jason McLellan, at the University of Texas at Austin.
"The fact that many of these leading candidates contain some of these mutations that we designed several years ago is just fantastic," McLellan told Austonia.
Prep work
After earning his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, McLellan went on to do postdoctoral research at the National Institutes of Health's Vaccine Research Center.
There, McLellan's mentor was trying to design a vaccine for HIV. But the process was difficult because HIV is such a sophisticated virus, he said.
So McLellan had the idea to apply the same vaccine design to other viruses, including respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, which is a cause of the common cold.
The team had some "major success" in designing a vaccine that could inoculate patients against RSV, he said. Science Magazine included their work in its list of Top 10 Breakthroughs of 2013.
Around the same time, Middle Eastern respiratory virus, or MERS, emerged. A coronavirus, like SARS before it and COVID-19 after, MERS ultimately infected 2,519 known patients and led to 866 deaths, according to the World Health Organization.
McLellan believed that coronaviruses were likely culprits for future pandemics and began working to invent a vaccine that would ward against them.
In 2016, he co-authored an article in Nature that detailed a vaccine design for a beta coronavirus known as HKU1, which is a relative of SARS and MERS.
"We were prepared then for late last year," said McLellan, who is now an associate professor of molecular biosciences at UT.
Lucky spike
So what is a spike protein and how does it relate to a COVID vaccine?
Coronaviruses get their name from the crown-like spikes on their surface. ("Corona," in Latin, means crown or wreath.)
These spike proteins serve two purposes, McLellan explained. First, they help bind the virus to receptors on its host's cells. Then, they rearrange—"like a transformer going from car to robot," he said—to fuse the virus to the host cell, which allows it to infect the host cell and replicate itself.
McLellan's team invented a spike protein that mimics those found on the coronavirus. When injected via a vaccine, it signals the body to start creating antibodies.
But that's not all.
The team also stabilized the spike protein, which means the antibodies are able to attach to the virus and lock it in place before it rearranges and infects the host cell.
"The pre-fusion form is optimal," he said.
This approach, which McLellan and NIH patented, is laid out in the 2016 Nature paper.
"Some of these (pharmaceutical) companies knew exactly how to take what we had published and apply it," he said.
Next steps
With promising reports from Pfizer and Moderna—and active trials underway from 10 other companies that also focus on the spike protein—experts say a vaccine could be widely distributed by the spring.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told CNN last week that priority populations, such as healthcare workers, could be vaccinated as early as next month, with increased access by April.
But challenges remain.
Austin-Travis County Interim Health Authority Dr. Mark Escott said that the Pfizer vaccine candidate requires ultra-cold storage, which many healthcare providers do not have access to, as well as a second dose. There is also a required peer review process.
In the meantime, COVID cases are soaring across the country—and in Austin, where there are now 209 new COVID cases confirmed each day, on average, up from 95.6 a week ago, according to Austin Public Health.
Back at McLellan's lab, however, the team is focused on tackling a different, more long-term challenge: creating a universal coronavirus vaccine.
"Because," he said, "there will be another coronavirus pandemic."
More on the vaccines:
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Popular
(Paxton Smith/Instagram)
Paxton Smith’s 2021 valedictory speech at Lake Highlands High School in Dallas wasn’t the same speech she had previously shared with school administrators. She dropped the approved speech and made a case for women’s reproductive rights after lawmakers passed the Texas "Heartbeat Bill.”
Her advocacy made news on NPR, YouTubeTV and in The Guardian. Just over a year later, the “war on (women’s) rights” she forewarned has come to a head as the U.S. Supreme Court voted Friday morning to overturn Roe v. Wade, ending constitutional protection for abortion access.
“It is up to the people to show up and show the courts and the politicians that we won’t sit back and let this happen,” Smith told Austonia Friday morning. “We will show up, we will fight back. Before, we were scared of them, now they should be scared of us.”
Now a University of Texas sophomore and abortion rights activist, 19-year-old Smith said she wanted to give the same speech in the “the most public way possible” to reach “as many people as possible who don't agree that I deserve this right.”
However, she says the response was “actually overwhelmingly positive” and supportive of her cause. According to a recent UT poll, 78% of Texas voters support abortion access in most cases.
The speech opened up further opportunities for activism: she advocated for reproductive rights at the International Forum on Human Rights in Geneva, interviewed with Variety magazine and spoke to tens of thousands at Austin’s Bans Off Our Bodies protest at the Texas Capitol in May.
Smith also serves on the board of directors for the Women’s Reproductive Rights Assistance Project, a national nonprofit organization that helps fund abortions or medication abortion—like Plan C pills—in all 50 states. Most recently, Smith has been attending protests in Washington, D.C. leading up to the ruling.
“This is land of the free. This is where you get to choose how you live your life,” Smith said. “Overturning Roe v. Wade violates everything that we have come to believe about what it means to live in this country. I think a lot of people aren't willing to accept that this is a human right that is most likely just going to be gone for over half of the country within the next couple of weeks.”
Bracing for the next steps, Smith gave some tips for supporters:
- Find a protest to attend.
- “I would say invite somebody to go to those protests with you, invite a couple of friends, invite people into the movement,” Smith said.
- Talk about the issue on social media—use the platform you have.
- “Have these kinds of conversations where people can just talk about their fears and then find ways to go and advocate for yourself,” Smith said.
- Volunteer at a nonprofit near you.
“I feel like a lot of the reason things have gotten as bad as they have within the abortion rights world is that people are not making a scene, not protesting, not putting the effort into ensuring that the government doesn't take away this right,” Smith said. “I want to emphasize that if you're not doing anything, don't expect the best scenario, expect the worst because that's the direction that we're going in.”
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(Council Member Chito Vela/Twitter)
The U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark ruling that guaranteed a constitutional right to an abortion, Friday morning. Moments later, Austin City Council set a special meeting for next month to pass a resolution aimed at decriminalizing abortion.
The GRACE Act, which stands for guarding the right to abortion care for everyone, is a twofold plan submitted by council member Jose “Chito” Vela. It recommends that city funds shouldn’t be used to surveil, catalog, report or investigate abortions. It also recommends that police make investigating abortion their lowest priority.
Council Member Vanessa Fuentes, who co-sponsored the resolution along with council members Paige Ellis, Kathie Tovo and Mayor Steve Adler, said the importance of the GRACE Act cannot be overstated.
“By introducing this resolution during a special session, City Council is doubling down on fighting back for reproductive health,” Fuentes said. “Items like the GRACE Act will promote essential healthcare while enabling individuals to exercise their bodily freedom.”
The act takes an approach similar to when former council member Greg Casar moved to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of marijuana. Ultimately, state law doesn't allow city officials to order police chiefs to adopt specific enforcement policies so the resolution would be a request to Police Chief Joe Chacon. In May, Politico reported that Vela is having "ongoing conversations" with Chacon about the proposal.
Austonia contacted Attorney General Ken Paxton for comment on the GRACE Act but did not hear back by time of publication. On Friday, Paxton celebrated the overturning of Roe and announced an annual office holiday on June 24 in recognition of the high court's decision.
In a press release, Vela said the Texas state government has a history of overturning municipal protections of human rights. Thirty days after the Supreme Court’s ruling, Texas will ban all abortions, with exceptions only to save the life of a pregnant patient or prevent “substantial impairment of major bodily function.”
Still, Vela expressed hope for the GRACE Act’s longevity. Council’s special meeting on it is set for the week of July 18.
“We know this resolution is legally sound, and Austin is not alone in this fight,” Vela said. “We are working with several other cities who are equally horrified by the prospect of an abortion ban and want to do everything they can to protect their residents.”
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