Vaccine Against SARS Virus Family Enters Human Clinical Trials

A vaccine candidate called GBP511 that builds upon a self-assembling nanoparticle technology, developed by researchers at the UW Medicine and its Institute for Protein Design, has begun human clinical testing in Australia. The vaccine is intended to broadly protect against COVID-19 and related coronaviruses, including some that haven’t yet jumped from animals to people.

The international Phase I/II trial, which began enrollment in January 2026, will evaluate safety and immune responses in approximately 368 healthy adults in Perth, Western Australia. The study will include comparisons with Comirnaty, an mRNA COVID vaccine currently in clinical use, with results expected by 2028.

The vaccine’s core is a computer-designed protein particle — a precise molecular assembly that does not exist in nature. To turn it into a vaccine, scientists at UW Medicine attached four immune-system cues from different coronaviruses: two from SARS-CoV-2, one from SARS-CoV-1 and one from a bat coronavirus, BtKY72. 

“GBP511 is the first vaccine to reach human testing that is intended to protect against multiple strains of the virus that causes COVID-19, as well as related coronaviruses, with the potential to spark dangerous outbreaks,” said Neil King, PhD, associate professor of biochemistry at UW Medicine and co-inventor of the nanoparticle platform underlying the vaccine. The clinical trial is an important step toward vaccines that guard against a family of viruses, not just individual types or strains. 

In preclinical studies, GBP511 protected animals from related viruses they weren’t directly immunized against.