# Design and Development of a Pan-betacoronavirus Vaccine

> **NIH NIH P01** · DUKE UNIVERSITY · 2021 · $17,521,953

## Abstract

Abstract - Overall
Compared to SARS-CoV-1 and MERS, the current SARS-CoV-2 virus is highly transmissible and to date has
caused over 85,000,000cases worldwidewith over 1,800,000 deaths. With an endemic population of multipleother
strains of CoVs in bats, rodents with intermediate hosts, civets and pangolins, and because of the ability of CoVs
to recombine, it is a certainty that new CoVs with infectious potential for humans will cause future human
pandemics. To address this problem in a focused and integrated way, this P01 team of virologists, immunologists,
computational biologists, structural biologists, biophysicists, evolutionary biologists, and traditional vacci nologists
will develop panbetacoronavirus (panbetaCoV) vaccines, including Merbecoviruses (group 2c), which gave rise to
MERS, and Sarbecoviruses (group 2b), which gave rise to SARS CoV-1 and SARS CoV-2, the three most deadly
betaCoV human outbreaks. The Significance of this grant is that it will provide for panbetaCoV vaccines for future
epidemics that can be immediately available at the onset of a betaCoV pandemic, avoiding much of the human
tragedy and social disruption caused by a pandemic. The Overall Specific Aims of the P01 are:
Aim 1. Develop and characterize immunogenicity of PanbetaCoV Sarbecovirus (Group 2b) vaccine candidates.
Aim 2. Determine Group 2b vaccine candidate protection capacity against group 2b panel of viruses.
Aim 3. Develop PanbetaCoVMerbecovirus (group2c) vaccine candidates, determinetheir immunogenicity, cross-
reactivity with other betaCoVs and protection capacity against group 2c panel of viruses.
This program project grant includes four projects. Project 1 will design vaccines in alphavirus replicon particle
(VRP) vaccine system, develop and test P01 vaccines in their unique mouse CoV challenge models. Project 2
will use structure-based molecular modeling and monomer and multimer nanoparticle spike protein designs and
test in wild-type mouse models. Project 3 will both design CoV vaccines and test vaccine designs expressed as
mRNAs in liquid nanoparticles (LNPs). Project 4 will computationally design B and T cell panbetaCoV vaccines.
This P01 proposes three Cores: an Administrative Core, a Biocontainment and Immune Monitoring Core,
and a Non-human Primate Core. Work in this P01 will provide panbetaCoV vaccines to protect against escape
mutants of SARS-CoV-2 in the current epidemic, and will be available to protect society against new betaCoVs
that might emerge to infect humans in the future.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10327519
- **Project number:** 1P01AI158571-01A1
- **Recipient organization:** DUKE UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** Barton F. Haynes
- **Activity code:** P01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2021
- **Award amount:** $17,521,953
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2021-09-16 → 2025-08-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10327519

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10327519, Design and Development of a Pan-betacoronavirus Vaccine (1P01AI158571-01A1). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-26 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10327519. Licensed CC0.

---

*[NIH grants dataset](/datasets/nih-grants) · CC0 1.0*