A small-molecule-dependent vaccine

Purpose and goal:

The long-term aim is to dramatically improve the safety of live attenuated vaccines to enable expansion of their use worldwide. Our strategy uses a synthetic biology technology for biocontainment that will be tested as a proof of concept. Expected results and effects: A mutant viral replicase will be created that allows viral replication to be controlled externally.

Approach and implementation:

The COVID RNA replicase will be mutated in Escherichia coli and then selections performed to establish ways of rescuing replicase activity that could potentially be used in the field.