By Tanay Gokhale, Bay City News
A new Stanford study published Thursday marks a big step forward in the creation of a new kind of vaccine that offers protection against a range of infections at once.
Traditionally, vaccines protect against one particular pathogen, but in this study, Stanford Medicine researchers created a vaccine that successfully offered immunity from respiratory viruses, bacteria, and even allergens in mice.
The study is published in the scientific journal Science, and the researchers behind the study hope to raise funding for clinical human trials.
Dr. Bali Narendran, senior author of the study, said that this study represents a departure from the way vaccines have been developed for more than 200 years.
“We have the flu shot that hopefully will protect us against flu, we have the COVID shot to protect us against COVID,” he said. “We don’t go to a pharmacist and say, ‘Doctor, could I have the flu shot so that I can be protected against COVID?’ So there’s a high degree of specificity.”
He explained that we have two types of immunity against pathogens: innate and adaptive.
Innate immunity kicks in immediately after a new infection and lasts for only a few days.
Adaptive immunity, on the other hand, produces specialized antibodies tailored to the pathogen, offering protection for years.
Because of this long-lasting protection, scientists have traditionally chosen adaptive immunity as the primary engine for immunization; they have created vaccines that trigger our immune systems to identify pathogens and produce tailor-made antibodies to fight them.
But a downside of this specificity, said Narendran, is that the vaccine is effective against only one pathogen.
Instead, Narendran and his team focused on our innate immunity, the body’s first line of defense.
“We share the innate immune system with almost all the other creatures on the planet, even worms, rodents, and flies,” he said. “It’s the older system of immune defense we have. It’s actually billions of years old.”
Over the past decade, he added, immunology research has shown that innate immunity could stave off a broader range of infections, but its short-lived nature — two weeks at best — was a problem.
This study presents a potential solution.
“We have figured out a way in which the adaptive immune system can teach the innate immune system to live longer,” said Narendran.
“The adaptive immune system says to the innate immune system, ‘You guys need to be on red alert for a few weeks, maybe a few months, because we don’t know what kind of infection might be coming.’”
By leveraging this synergy between the two immune systems, the vaccine extends innate immunity up to six months.
“It’s not just innate or adaptive, but it’s the partnership. It’s both of them working hand in hand together. Then you have wonderful things happening, like what we’ve shown.
If funding for human clinical trials is available, Narendran believes that a viable vaccine — which will likely be an intranasal spray or aerosol — could be ready in 3 to 7 years.
But he emphasized that the vaccine will not be a replacement for the current vaccines. In the case of another pandemic, for instance, tried and tested, highly targeted vaccines are a better alternative.
“If we don’t have a vaccine, I would say this [new vaccine] has great utility,” he said. “Even in non-pandemic times, as we go into the winter months, one is always more susceptible to flu, COVID, common cold, respiratory-sensitive virus, and other kinds of bacteria. This might be useful in inducing broad protection for some weeks or some months.”
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