QAU’s Research on COVID-19 Vaccine Candidates Recognized Internationally

The researchers’ team, under the supervision of Dr. Syed Sikander Azam from Computational Biology Lab at National Center for Bioinformatics, Quaid-i-Azam University (QAU) have identified novel vaccine candidates against Covid-19. The researchers utilized indigenously developed computational methods to design novel vaccine construct available at the Computational Biology Lab to identify the novel multi-epitope based vaccine candidates, said a statement issued by the University.

The study highlights the details of extensive computational experiments for identification of novel vaccine candidates through vaccinomics. Immunoinformatics approaches were utilized for the purpose of prioritizing potential vaccine candidates against COVID-19 considering their ease of use in further investigations, better delivery and efficient immune processing of epitopes. This study is recently published in a reputed journal “European Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences.”According to the published work, designing of vaccination strategies that target immune response focusing on these conserved epitopes could generate immunity that provide cross protection across Betacoronaviruses.

Dr. Sikander Azam said the promising computational findings might deliver preliminary epitopes set for a vaccine against the COVID-19. Meanwhile, probable prevention strategy discussed in this study for human beings to avoid becoming a reason for the extinction of various species either by hunting and/or over utilizing other mammals which could be a reason for resistance both from microbes and other animal species of this kingdom. Dr. Sikander further highlighted the presence of theory of retaliation and emphasized the need of strategic studies keeping in view the advancements in defense mechanism of avian and avian related microbes avenging humans.

The Vice Chancellor QAU, Prof. Dr. Muhammad Ali, and Dean Faculty of Biological Sciences Dr. Muhammad Shahab congratulated Dr. Syed Sikander Azam and his young research team comprising of Sajjad, Afifa, Rabia, Abbas, Faisal, Naila and Nousheen on this remarkable accomplishment and admired this achievement.