On Sept. 28, 2021, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases announced it had awarded approximately $36.3 million to three academic institutions to conduct research to develop vaccines to protect against multiple types of coronaviruses and viral variants. The awards were intended to fuel vaccine research for a diverse family of coronaviruses, with a primary focus on potential pandemic-causing coronaviruses, such as SARS-CoV-2.

The new awards are funded by NIAID’s Division of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases and its Division of Allergy, Immunology, and Transplantation through the Emergency Awards Notice of Special Interest (NOSI) on Pan-Coronavirus Vaccine Development Program Projects. The notice was issued in November 2020 while many SARS-CoV-2 vaccines were still under development because a critical need remained for prophylactic vaccines offering broad protective immunity against other coronaviruses, such as Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS-CoV) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (SARS-CoV).

The awards are designed to fund multidisciplinary teams at each institution to conduct research focused on incorporating understanding of coronavirus virology and immunology, immunogen design, and innovative vaccine and adjuvant platforms and technologies to discover, design, and develop pan-coronavirus vaccine candidates that provide broad protective immunity to multiple coronavirus strains. Specific programs will address coronavirus diversity and infectious potential in humans, include innovative immunogen design and vaccine platforms, and approaches to elicit potent and durable pan-coronavirus immunity, and evaluate vaccine candidates in preclinical models. The awardees are expected to be flexible in the response to emerging knowledge about SARS-CoV-2 immune responses and infection and factor in new information as vaccines candidates are developed. Additional awards are expected to be issued under the NOSI in 2022 to support pan-coronavirus vaccine research at more institutions.

The new awards build on the $1.2 billion investment NIAID has made in coronavirus vaccine research since the COVID-19 pandemic began, including multiple projects in pan-coronavirus vaccine research in the NIAID intramural and extramural programs.