What If…Annual Flu Shots Were a Distant Memory?
Part of the Future of Aging: Medical Moonshots series
COVID and influenza mutate to evade the protective antibodies that follow a vaccination, creating the need for annual updates. Vaccine research aims for one shot that would protect against all current and future variants. Dr. Neil King of the UW’s Institute for Protein Design will explain how new technologies are bringing us closer to this goal of a “universal” vaccine.
Dr. Neil King of the Institute for Protein Design will explain how new technologies are bringing us closer to this goal of a “universal” vaccine.
Annual flu shots and updated COVID boosters are necessary because coronaviruses and influenza viruses mutate — that is, they slightly change their shape — to evade the protective antibodies our bodies make in response to vaccination. A long-standing goal in vaccine research is to make “universal” vaccines that would protect against all COVID variants or all influenza viruses. Is this possible? If so, what might such a vaccine look like?
Dr. King will provide examples of what it looks like when a virus mutates, how this leads to reduced vaccine efficacy, and how new technologies — including several being developed at UW — may deliver next-generation vaccines.