vaccine

Brewing Immunity: The Vaccine Beer Experiment

Posted on by Sara Millevolte

What if a vaccine didn’t come in a vial or a syringe, but in a pint glass?

It’s the kind of question that sounds hypothetical–something meant to provoke discussion rather than describe a real experiment. And yet, it’s one that a virologist claims to have taken seriously enough to test in his own kitchen.

Since publicly sharing his experiment and preliminary results, the idea of “vaccine beer” has drawn fascination, skepticism and no small amount of discomfort from across the scientific community.

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How Computational Design Can Predict the Next Viral Variant—and Help Us Prepare

Posted on by Johanna Lee

As SARS-CoV-2 continues to evolve, one lesson is painfully clear: immunity today may not guarantee protection tomorrow. Viruses are experts at mutating into countless variants to evade detection or neutralization by the immune system. In the race to keep up with this “immune escape”, researchers have largely focused on reactive strategies—testing vaccines against variants that already exist. But what if we could flip the script and anticipate where the virus is going next?

That’s precisely the aim of a new study published in Immunity. This study introduces EVE-Vax, a computational design platform that builds synthetic spike proteins capable of mimicking immune escape mutations—before they naturally arise.

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The Long Road to a Norovirus Vaccine: How Close Are We?

Posted on by Sara Millevolte

This winter, norovirus outbreaks surged across the U.S., with cases nearly doubling from last year, according to the CDC. Schools, cruise ships, nursing homes and healthcare facilities saw widespread illness, underscoring the urgent need for a norovirus vaccine.

Each year, norovirus causes 685 million infections worldwide and is the leading cause of foodborne illness in the U.S., responsible for 21 million cases annually. Despite its massive impact, there is still no approved vaccine—but recent advancements suggest that this could change.

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Cancer Preventing Vaccines: Unleashing the Potential of Tumor Antigens

Posted on by Sara Millevolte

It has been more than 100 years since Dr. William B. Coley, known today as the “Father of Immunotherapy,” made the first recorded attempt to mobilize the immune system as a means of treating cancer (9). Decades later, the discovery of T cells and the vital role they play in the immune system set the groundwork for many new immunotherapy treatments, such as those involving monoclonal antibodies, cytokines, CAR T cells, and checkpoint inhibitors.

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mRNA Vaccines for COVID-19: The Promise and Pitfalls

Posted on by Ken Doyle

Updated 8/25/2021, 4/29/2024

Multiple battles are being fought in the war against the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus that causes COVID-19. Currently, there are nearly 5,000 clinical trials listed in the World Health Organization (WHO) database, either underway or in the recruiting stage, for vaccines and antiviral drugs. The Moderna mRNA vaccine and Janssen vaccine received emergency use authorization (EUA) from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and have since been fully approved; the Pfizer-BioNTech Vaccine (marketed as Comiraty) received FDA approval in August 2021.

mrna vaccines and coronavirus covid-19

Both the Moderna vaccine and Comiraty are mRNA-based, as opposed to most conventional vaccines against established diseases that are protein-based. Typically, the key ingredient in viral vaccines is either part of an inactivated virus, or one or more expressed proteins (antigens) that are a part of the virus. These protein antigens are responsible for eliciting an immune response that will fight future infection by the actual virus. Another approach is to use a replication-deficient viral vector (such as adenovirus) to deliver the gene encoding the antigen into human cells. This method was used for the coronavirus vaccine developed by Oxford University in collaboration with AstraZeneca; phase 3 interim data were announced on the heels of the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna announcements. All three vaccines target the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, because it is the key that unlocks a path of entry into the host cell.

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The Making of a Vaccine: Preparation for Flu Season

Posted on by Jordan Villanueva

At the time that I’m writing this, I still haven’t succumbed to the “yuck” that’s been knocking out my co-workers one-by-one since November. Those of us who are still healthy were discussing how we fortify our immune systems in preparation for the flu season. All of the suggestions were pretty typical—orange juice, Vitamin C supplements, and of course, the the annual flu shot.

For all of the agencies responsible for the production of the seasonal influenza vaccine, preparation for flu season begins long before the rest of us are stocking up on Emergen-C. Continue reading “The Making of a Vaccine: Preparation for Flu Season”

Could This be the Next Generation Ebola Virus Vaccine?

Posted on by Sara Klink

Ebola virus has received a lot of press in the last year due to the extended epidemic outbreak in Africa. Ebola is part of the family of Filioviruses (filamentous virus) and causes hemorrhagic fever that leads to internal bleeding and loss of bodily fluids. As the epidemic in Africa has illustrated so starkly, once the virus infects a large enough population, the human suffering it causes is devastating to individuals and communities. Because no treatment other than palliative fluid support is available to those infected by Ebola virus, virologists have focused attention on potential therapeutics and vaccines. The vaccine strategies now in clinical trials are based on a single Ebola virus glycoprotein, GP, and involve a DNA-based vaccine or innoculation with an Ebola protein expressed from a viral vector. How effective and safe this approach may be for protection from Ebola virus infection is currently under investigation.

Based on the history of effective vaccines, Marzi et al. was interested in testing a whole-virus vaccine for Ebola (EBOV). A whole-virus-based vaccine like smallpox or measles uses an attenuated or inactivated virus. The advantage of this method is that all the proteins as well as the nucleic acid are available for immunological reaction, offering broader-based protection than a single protein. In the recently published Science report from Marzi et al., a replication-incompetent Ebola virus was used as the basis for a whole-virus vaccine that was tested for its efficacy in nonhuman primates.

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