Spike protein vaccines may help fight Covid variants: IIT-M study

Researchers sought to gauge the response in cases where post-vaccination infections were caused by a variant other than the original Wuhan strain

Spike protein vaccines may be effective against multiple variants of the coronavirus (SARS COV-2), according to a study by researchers at Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT Madras). The spike protein is one of the four major proteins found in coronaviruses; it helps the Sars-CoV-2 virus to latch on to a host cell and, in turn, infect the body eventually.

The results of the study suggest that the threat from the selected variants — Delta plus, Gamma, Zeta, Mink and Omicron — may be dealt with by vaccine-induced T cell responses in spite of having compromised neutralising antibodies. T cells are