On Apr. 14, 2020, researchers from the University of Pittsburgh announced that they had adapted a system to produce a candidate MERS vaccine to rapidly produce an experimental vaccine using the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. The study appeared online in EBioMedicine, a Lancet journal.

The team developed a method for delivering their MERS vaccine into mice using a microneedle patch. Such patches resemble a piece of Velcro, with hundreds of tiny microneedles made of sugar. The needles prick just into the skin and quickly dissolve, releasing the vaccine.