Finding Covid vaccine ‘won’t be easy’ says Killucan scientist

Eilís Ryan

The difficulty in developing a vaccine against Covid-19 should not be underestimated, a Czech-based science expert from Killucan has warned.

Dr Liam Keegan, who is attached to the CEITEC Masaryk University at Brno, estimates that it will take at least until the end of this year to determine the efficacy of various vaccines that have just gone to trial.

And even if an efficacious vaccine is found, it could take a long time to roll out sufficient quantities.

However, he adds, there is no guarantee that a vaccine will be found, in which case, we will have to live with what is being described as “a new normal”.

“We have had SARS since 2003 and there’s a related thing called MERS that came along in the meantime. We don’t have a vaccine for those. HIV has been around for 30 years and we don’t have a vaccine for it,” said Dr Keegan from Brno, where his university is on lockdown.

Dr Keegan leads a team that is being acclaimed for its discovery that there is a link between some neurodegenerative diseases and the absence of types of protein that have a function in brain health.

The team has determined that the loss of a certain protein can prompt the brain to engage in an antiviral response, which may be the root cause of a range of disorders.

Previous research carried out by Dr Keegan was at Harvard and the methods developed then created the modern biotechnology industry and methods being used to produce vaccines based on Covid-19 coronavirus protein.

“We worked on gene-regulating proteins that are immensely scarce. So the lab developed all the ‘tricks’ that are modern biotechnology – for example, where you take a gene and you put it into yeast or bacteria and you arrange to get a massive expression of it.”

This is the form of action scientists are taking in their work on Covid-19: “If you want to make an antibody to Covid you need to express the protein that’s on the surface and you have to make an awful lot of it.

“And then one thing you could do is inject that protein into a rabbit or something and you get an antiserum, you get a response. Or you inject the protein into people: you make a vaccine with it and you inject that protein, and the human body makes an antibody to this protein.

“That whole trick of over-expressing proteins to do all that kind of thing was first developed in the lab where I did my PhD.”

Dr Keegan explains that the newest, fastest way to make a vaccine is to avoid all the work of purifying the coronavirus coat protein: “You take a harmless virus and use it to make a new recombinant virus that will produce the coat protein of coronavirus. When you inject this new virus into people the coronavirus coat protein is made directly in people. Then you wait and test these people and hope they make plenty of antibodies to the coat protein that will protect them against the real coronavirus.”

The challenge for scientists working on a vaccine for Covid is that while the human body will attempt to counter a virus, it has to first be able to recognise its presence. Some viruses are adept at staying ‘hidden’ until established.

“One problem is the protein you’re trying to make the antibody against can have sugars attached to it, and they’re there by design: they hide the piece of the virus coat that you are trying to make an antibody against.

“That is a reason they’ve never succeeded in making a vaccine for HIV and possibly also why that’s true for SARS,” says Dr Keegan.

“So the thing of having these sugars on the virus is that it makes it hard to make a vaccine – but it also makes it harder to become immune to the virus.

“It’s not clear yet but it looks as though mild infections might not lead to an antibody response to the virus. Severe infections will, but some people who have had it in China aren’t showing strong reactions or strong signs of antibody responses. So the thing is if the virus is so good at not evoking these responses, that poses a challenge.

“More recent studies in Europe and the US look promising – more people seem to have antibodies to the virus.”

Dr Keegan says the research of the last 40 years means scientists have a greater understanding of viruses and of the techniques in countering them: “The world is lucky now that it has so many people with skills in molecular biology and they’re all able to try to figure out this bloody virus,” he says.

“I think the effort being put into this vaccine is greater than anything that was done for HIV or certainly for SARS.

“So I think we might get it, but the timeline is not going to be quick. It’s going to be the end of the year till we know and it will take most of next year until we have enough to vaccinate the whole world.”

Dr Keegan has been in the Czech Republic for four years: he and his wife, Prof Mary Anne O´Connell, who works in the same field, relocated there after living in Edinburgh. That city still counts as home, as that’s where their house and two student-age children are.

Mary is from Abbeyfeale in Limerick, and the couple met in the US, Liam having moved to Harvard to study for his doctorate after completing an honours degree in botany with biochemistry at UCD.

The former Columba College and (St Nathy’s of Roscommon) man had heard of Mary before the two met: “Mary did her undergraduate studies in UCG and moved to the US in 1981, but I didn’t meet her until she came to Boston in 1988.”

Remarkably, someone told him in 1986 of Mary’s existence: they had met her in New York and said to Liam: “There’s this woman down in New York that you should meet.”

The two moved to Switzerland from the US and then to Edinburgh; they return as often as they can to Ireland, and Liam has family here and maintains great links with home via the internet.