The COVID-19 vaccine made by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford uses a genetically modified common cold virus from chimpanzees, altered with blueprints for the coronavirus's spike protein.
The coronavirus's outer coating is covered in spike proteins, which give the virus its crown-like appearance. The spike protein possesses receptor binding domains, or RBDs, that the virus uses to pry open receptors before penetrating the cellular membrane. The AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine carries a gene with the code for the spike protein that the coronavirus uses to enter a human cell. The spike protein gene is cut from the coronavirus and inserted into a vector, a virus that is weakened so that it cannot grow inside the human body after injection.
The AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine's chimpanzee adenovirus vector was previously used to make an Ebola vaccine. The chimpanzee adenovirus is genetically modified so that it cannot infect people, while the gene with the code of the spike protein is inserted.
Once the vector delivers this genetic code to a cell, it causes the cell to produce spike proteins. These spike proteins are harmless on their own, but they should trigger the body to mount an immune response. This response produces antibodies and memory cells that will recognize SARS-CoV-2, the actual virus that causes COVID-19.
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