August 31, 2021

Precision Vaccines: Shielding the globe against emerging threats

Pandemics and epidemics have plagued humankind for millenia. New precision approaches are enabling more rapid and effective responses to these threats but much remains to be done to tailor interventions to the most vulnerable and convey the science to the public.

Speakers

Ofer Levy

Director, Precision Vaccines Program, Children’s Hospital

Elissa Weitzman

PI, Weitzman Lab; Affiliate Faculty, Computational Health Informatics Program (CHIP); Associate Professor of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical

Galit Alter

Principal Investigator, Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard; Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical Schoo; Co-Director, Harvard Center for AIDS Research (CFAR)

Highlights

Show Summary

The topic tonight was precision vaccines shielding us in our current world. We had three extraordinary imaginators Dr. Ofer Levy, Dr. Galit Alter, Dr. Elissa Weitzman, and a wonderful rendition musically from Cory all talks about how their childhoods fostered inquiry and curiosity and Galit talked about her early work with patient zero, and her realization with HIV about how a virus can make the whole world stand still, leading to her desire to be a virus hunter and her fascination with how human systems fight itty bitty viruses. All three speakers talked about how quickly and successfully, our lab based capabilities have moved forward. The drag seems to be with human preferences, and as Ofir pointed out, are vaccines can be a victim of their own success working so well against something like polio that we forget how badly polio could be decimating us. Our imaginators pointed out that science has taken a process that used to take 10 to 20 years to develop a vaccine down to less than one year. And one of the speakers said it could in the future be less than 100 days. Elise pointed out that we've always had anti vaxxers but that social media serves as an amplifier of concerns and misinformation. The imaginators talked about our very politicized conversation and the urgent need to return to common good and collective thinking over described being on 30 media outlets after the Vax Seen was approved, and being aware that each channel have their own political agenda and questions they tried to drive him into. Elisa reminds us that technology in the end is easier than sociology. Each imaginator had the most incredibly creative ideas on how to improve communication of science to the public. Alise Of course, reminding us that information is neither necessary nor sufficient for good communications. But the ideas mentioned in this conversation were so rich, building a capacity for science and public health literacy, returning to common good and collective thinking. Galena talked about precision communication for the masses and making information readily available in digestible form. Elise had great idea that all politicians should be forced to attend a science literacy boot camp. To build a broader understanding. I will admit I love that one. Steve talked about how to build bigger trust pods in the real world. Jim young proposed inviting 30 to six top global communicators to compete and improve sharing the vaccine story. We even talked about leveraging new formats like un and team Halo developing one minute tic Tock videos. A big topic tonight and all the speakers talked about the power of precision medicine, the elite describe how everyone's immune system is different. And over describe the many types of differences by age, sex, socio economic, comorbidity and all kinds of different ways. The Elite describe the vision to make a vaccine that will fit you like a hand in a glove over describe the incredible potential of TPP target product profile. I believe I got that right. We're eventually you could imagine a vaccine that would be pan pathogenic, or that would work across families of viruses. In other words, one vaccine that could address multiple Corona viruses or all influenza viruses. The speakers describe the incredible range of agents that vaccines are or could be developed for including HIV, limes, Ebola Zika, influenza, and at the bleeding edge, we could apply the vaccine modeled possibly and are working on applying it to socio behavioral problems, like opioid or fentanyl addiction, over talked about the ability over time to develop a single vaccine that could be tailored and that could protect against multiple diseases. He shared that the optimal vaccine would be safe, durable, offer protection for life be affordable and scalable. Well, the vaccine mandate over reminded us of the power of big data approaches to modeling immune responses outside of the body. So in a test tube and petri dish, we could already be testing what works and using edge events to get further responses and boost rates. In the end, Elisa reminded us we really do hard things, human beings are remarkable. And we need to be hopeful. The Elite reminded us that the world is small, less than six degrees of freedom. And we all have to be ambassadors in ways that build trust and break down walls. She reminded us to leave this going out looking to be ambassadors of trust, which I think is quite a mighty mission for all of us. And I want to thank you for just such an inspiring evening.