Future COVID-19 boosters may be delivered as a nasal spray instead of a shot, thanks to new research led by scientists at the University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC). The team is investigating the potential of nasal vaccines—already used for the flu—to provide enhanced protection against COVID by targeting the virus directly in the respiratory system.
“Most of the time, the strains we select for vaccines aren’t a perfect match, because the virus evolves faster than we can keep up,” said Dr. David Topham, founding director of URMC’s Translational Immunology and Infectious Disease Institute. “We need vaccines that elicit cross-reactive immunity—immunity that doesn’t rely on which strain is circulating but still offers protection and prevents severe illness or hospitalization.”
The study, funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) with a $2.3 million grant, is examining how nasal vaccines could strengthen the immune response in the respiratory tract, where COVID first attacks. The research builds on data collected from a prior study, led by URMC’s Dr. Angela Branche, which compared different types of COVID vaccines. That study, published in Nature Medicine in 2023, revealed that boosters do not need to perfectly match a virus strain to offer protection.
A key focus of the new research is understanding how T cells, a type of immune cell, can boost immunity in the respiratory system. Unlike antibodies that target the virus’s spike protein, T cells focus on parts of the virus that do not mutate. Dr. Topham’s team aims to measure how effectively nasal vaccines generate these critical immune cells, which are believed to play a crucial role in respiratory infections.
“There is a new generation of vaccines being developed to induce better local immunity in the respiratory tract, but we still lack robust ways to measure it,” Topham said. The research is expected to be completed within a year.
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