An AI-created vaccine that could change how we protect ourselves from future pandemics

[00:00:00]Everyone take a deep breath because I'm about to say two words in the same sentence that get people really worked up. AI and vaccines. Okay, just just wait. Wait. Hear me out, okay? An AI-designed vaccine was just trialed in humans for the first time. I feel like that didn't really help my case.

[00:00:19]>> [laughter] >> Okay, I promise that is a really good thing. If you've ever gotten a flu vaccine, you know that one of the frustrating parts is the idea that it might not work that year. Why is that?

[00:00:30]Well, viruses are extremely good at evolving, possibly with the sole intention of making vaccinologists pull out their hair. And every virus mutates, not just the flu. Remember all the strain this and strain that discussion around COVID? So, that's why every flu season researchers have to line up all the variants like it's the starting line of the Kentucky Derby and make their bets about who will be the front-runners, or I mean the dominant strains the following year. Sometimes that works out really well, and sometimes we aren't as protected as we would like to be. This is where AI comes in, and it's pretty cool. One reason scientists are so excited about the promise of AI in medicine is that it can evaluate extremely large data sets at a pace that is hard for the human mind to even comprehend. A team at the University of Cambridge wanted to put that ability to use and see if AI could help them develop an umbrella vaccine for coronaviruses. What they did is feed AI a bunch of genetic codes from different coronaviruses gathered by a disease surveillance program. And it spit out a super antigen. The idea is that it would work against the entire corona family, not just one strain or another, rendering the virus roulette researchers play every time a new strain comes to town unnecessary. If the super antigen works, we'd be prepped for anything coronavirus sends our way. Now, as the cast of Love Island UK would say, it's early days. The groundbreaking trial had only 39 participants, and they were just testing to see whether the vaccine was safe. Professor Jonathan Heeney, the lead researcher from the team at the University of Cambridge, had this to say about what this development means for the field. "This is a fundamental shift in how we prepare for pandemics. Next steps are larger phase two trial that will see how robust of an immune response the vaccine can trigger.

[00:02:19]So, it will be some time before this technology comes to a CVS near you."