Panning for gold
The term “pan-coronavirus” gets bandied about to describe many ongoing vaccine development efforts, but the meaning of that phrase is fuzzy.
First, there are the improved COVID-19 vaccines that were designed to protect against any mutant forms that the SARS-CoV-2 virus could plausibly adopt.
These might be better called pan-variant COVID-19 vaccines. But when lab tests reveal some degree of cross-protection against SARS-CoV-1 — the virus behind the 2002–2003 severe acute respiratory syndrome outbreak — some vaccine developers are quick to adopt the more expansive pan-coronavirus label.Among shots purposely designed to be more inclusive, the pan-coronavirus moniker takes on different meanings. Few, if any, scientists are developing truly universal candidates that would protect against all four major lineages of coronavirus.
Most are instead taking aim either at sarbecoviruses, the subgenus that includes all the SARS-like viruses, or betacoronaviruses, the larger branch of the family tree that also counts the pathogen responsible for Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) and some seasonal coronaviruses that cause the common cold.
