Pandemic Killer: An Israeli Professor gets a patent granted by the United States which could lead to a virus vaccine

The Patent and Trademark Office of the United States (also known as ‘USPTO’) has granted a patent for technology that could lead to the growth of the vaccine of COVID-19 in a matter of some months to a researcher at the Tel Aviv University in Israel.

 

[Illustrative: Magen David Adom medical team members, wearing protective gear, handle a coronavirus test from patients in Jerusalem, on April 17, 2020. (Olivier Fitoussi/Flash90)]

 

The University said in a statement by announcing the development that, “The vaccine targets the novel coronavirus’s Achilles’ heel, its Receptor Binding Motif (RBM), a critical structure that enables the virus to bind to and infect a target cell.”

 

According to the statements by the Tel Aviv University, the vaccine under development would reconstruct the coronavirus’s RBM and by reconstruction of such RBM, the human body’s human system can learn how to block the real virus from cells when it enters the body.

 

The Times of Israel’s Hebrew sister site, Zman was informed by Professor Jonathan Gershoni, of the School of Molecular Cell Biology and Biotechnology at the university’s George S. Wise Faculty of Life Sciences, that there is already interest from pharmaceutical companies in the method he is developing. Prof. Gershoni has researched viruses and their interaction with human receptors for 35 years. He honed his skills during the outbreak of SARS in 2004 and MERS in 2012, both SARS and MERS belonging to the same family as of the COVID-19.

 

His team has developed the RBM-based method suing that research that Prof. Gershoni believes could be particularly effective. He said “In a short time, we will be able to adapt our approach as a platform for developing an innovative and effective vaccine.” He also said that it will require a pharmaceutical company to develop the technology, to take the patented method forward to produce a vaccine. After that is done, the vaccine would also be needed to go through the approval of Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

 

The novel Coronavirus has caused over 1,70,000 deaths worldwide.