WHO Consultation on Cross-Reactivity with other coronaviruses

Overview

A number of vaccine candidates and antibody-based therapeutic candidates against SARS CoV and MERS CoV are in various stages of development. If there is found to be substantial cross-reactivity between nCoV and any other known coronavirus for which immuno-prophylactics and/or -therapeutics are already under development, it may be quicker to repurpose these medical countermeasures (MCMs) for use against nCoV than to develop new MCMs from scratch. The experts were therefore asked to comment on the potential of cross-reactivity based on available data – both the limited laboratory data that has been published by the Wuhan Institute of Virology and any available sequence and modelling data.