VIDO aims to stay ahead of COVID mutations after $24M grant

It’s a difficult task to predict the future, but that’s exactly what the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization is aiming to do.

The Saskatoon-based organization recently received a $24 million grant from the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations.

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The hope is that the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization (VIDO) will be able to make a coronavirus vaccine umbrella to battle against the entire virus family.

Dr. Nicole Lurie, the coalition’s executive director of emergency preparedness, said if it is successfully developed it would be like winning the vaccine lottery.

“This tool could become a critical part of our future arsenal when responding to coronavirus epidemics,” said Lurie.

“If it’s successful, this vaccine could serve as a Holy Grail, protecting us from both the coronaviruses we know about and the ones that could still strike in the future.”

“This could help stop future outbreaks in its tracks before it spreads to pandemic proportions,” she added.

According to Lurie, research and development between the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations and VIDO on an all-in-one coronavirus vaccine began back in 2021 at the height of the COVID pandemic.

“Such a vaccine could save lives, keep society safe, (and) prevent economic hardship,” Lurie added.

Part of what makes vaccines so difficult to develop is the challenge of predicting how a virus is going to mutate over time. But the grant means VIDO now has the tools necessary to make such predictions.

“You can use artificial intelligence, bioinformatics and computational biology to predict where those mutations will take place,” explained Dr. Volker Gerdts, director and CEO of VIDO.

Dr. Volker Gerdts, director of VIDO. (University of Saskatchewan)

Gerdts said that means scientists can “develop vaccines today for tomorrow’s pathogens.”

A virus can mutate in a number of ways, and Gerdts noted that if a virus had three potential mutation points, it means the organization may have to prepare three different vaccines.

“That’s really where all the… AI comes in, to predict which of those is the most likely scenario,” he said.

Back in 2022, VIDO announced it had begun working on a COVID-19 vaccine. Gerdts said that the vaccine was successful in its human trials in Canada and Africa and that this week’s announcement is for the next phase of that vaccine.

VIDO is also in process of establishing a “level four” containment lab, which means it can conduct research on some of the highest-risk viruses in the world.

Gerdts said the goal is for that lab to be ready in two years.