The National Institutes of Health has awarded New York City-based Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai a five-year, $13 million grant to develop new coronavirus vaccines.
A multidisciplinary team of experts from five research institutes will collaborate on the effort, which aims to develop variant-proof, universal vaccines that offer long-lasting protection against coronaviruses.
Researchers will study what supports a strong and long-lasting immune response against the viruses and use those findings to inform the development of vaccines for SARS-CoV-2 and other coronaviruses.
"Our multidisciplinary team is poised to tackle the challenges posed by coronaviruses head on," Viviana Simon, MD, PhD, a professor at the Icahn School of Medicine who is leading the project, said in a Sept. 12 news release. "By pooling our expertise and resources, we aim to develop next-generation coronavirus vaccines with broad protection, thus contributing significantly to curbing the current pandemic and averting future coronavirus-related public health crises."
Learn more about the effort here.