CVR - Coronavirus Vaccines R&D Roadmap

Milestone
1.2.b

Animal sampling

In progress

Enhance sampling of wild and captive animal populations—particularly at the human-animal interface—in geographically diverse regions worldwide to improve understanding of the distribution, viral diversity, host range, and prevalence of coronaviruses globally.

Progress Highlights

Identification of novel coronaviruses and coronavirus subgenera

Chen 2025 found that a recently discovered merbecovirus lineage (HKU5-CoV-2) from Pipistrelle bats was determined to be capable of using hACE2, and ACE2 orthologs from other species, indicating a wide potential host range.

da Luz Wallau 2025 identified a novel betacoronavirus subgenus, ambecovirus, in two different bat species collected from different caves in Brazil, suggesting interspecies transmission and viral dispersion; The N-terminal domain and receptor binding domain of the new subgenus is highly divergent from existing coronaviruses, complicating efforts to evaluate zoonotic potential.

Takada 2025 identified a novel bat coronavirus of a new betacoronavirus subgenus in South America; the Spike protein of this novel coronavirus contains a functional furin cleavage site one amino acid divergent from SARS-CoV-2; comparison to other betacoronaviruses suggests that the Spike S1/S2 junction could be a “hotspot” for cleavage site incorporation.

Zhu 2023 found that a novel hibecovirus (Bat CD35) was discovered in bats in China and found to contain a polybasic furin-like cleavage site similar to SARS-CoV-2.

Coronavirus distribution, diversity, and host ranges

Extensive efforts have been made to characterize known and unknown coronaviruses in bat populations over the past few years, particularly in Asia and Africa. Several studies have associated certain bat species and geographic ranges with specific coronaviruses.

Recombination has been identified as a major factor in genetic diversity of coronaviruses and potential expansion of host ranges.

Asia
Africa

Xie 2025 conducted comparative analyses of bovine coronavirus genomes from specimens collected 2022-2024 in China and circulating human coronaviruses, demonstrating possible recombination between bovine GD-GZ-01 and the human OC43 coronavirus.