2023 Nobel Prize winner dr. Drew Weissman wants a mRNA pan vaccine for various viruses. Corona, Bird flu and others. In one sentence he accidentally speaks of a pan virus.
"Think of virus vaccines as there are easy ones and there are difficult ones. So HCV, influenza, HIV, malaria, TB are difficult. But we've gone beyond just standard infectious disease vaccines. We're working on vaccines for autoimmune diseases, vaccines that turn off specific immune responses."
"We're working on in vivo gene therapies. So what that means is instead of taking cells out of a person's body, which is difficult and expensive, we do the gene therapy in the body. We direct the lipid nanoparticles to the bone marrow stem cells or the liver or the heart or whatever organ you're treating, and you deliver Cas9 gene editing that can fix the genetic defects."
"So my dream five years from now, hopefully, is to go somewhere probably in Africa, but anywhere in the world with an igloo cooler full of RNA LNPs that will cure sickle cell anemia with a single injection. And I think that's possible. Gene therapy, therapeutics using RNA is in the body. You just give the RNA LNPs and they do the work in the body, and that's critical."
"And I have like a list of things from your website on some of the other things you're working on, HIV, herpes, Lyme's disease, avian flu, norovirus, Ebola, and you're also working then on AI tools as well to help with discovery. And this idea of pan vaccines too. Do you want to say something about the idea there of vaccines for multiple diseases."
"Yes, so if we look at pandemics, most viral pandemics have been caused by influenza and coronaviruses. The issues with both of those is they have animal reservoirs. And we never know what the next transfer crossover is going to be."
"So for influenza, We see bird flu is now infecting cattle and cattle milk. We see coronaviruses are constantly crossing over. So instead of making a new vaccine every time a virus crosses over, our idea is that we make a pan vaccine, one that treats all influenza viruses."
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