Scientists used AI to design a vaccine capable of protecting against a wide range of bird flu variants. That’s a game changer for national biosecurity and more resilient public health systems, they say.
Scientists at Cambridge University have developed a new vaccine using Artificial Intelligence that targets multiple strains of bird flu in one shot, rather than providing immunity to one variant. The jab could protect even from variants that haven’t emerged yet, they say.
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT
The vaccine is part of a new generation of vaccines targeting multiple strains of the same virus, with the aim of better preparing for future health emergencies, including those involving currently unknown threats.
“Rather than providing immunity to a single variant of bird flu, our new broad-spectrum vaccine is protective against a huge range of variants,” said Jonathan Heeney, from the Lab of Viral Zoonotics at the University of Cambridge, who led the work.
“It’s designed to anticipate viral evolution, rather than reacting to it,” he added.
The study, published in Cell Reports Medicine, found that the new vaccine provides broader protection and superior survival rates compared to standard candidate vaccines that target only one strain currently stockpiled for pandemic preparedness.
Like the coronaviruses that caused COVID-19 and many other emerging infectious diseases, bird flu is an RNA virus. RNA viruses represent a particular threat to human health because they can mutate rapidly into new strains that can jump from animals to humans and evade our immune systems — and the protection offered by existing vaccines.
Current pandemic preparedness relies on stockpiling vaccines against individual virus variants that have already emerged. These new-generation vaccines are a game changer for national biosecurity and more resilient public health systems, the authors noted.
“We can be prepared to respond immediately to virus epidemics and pandemics, rather than the current scenario of always being on the back foot and responding with a strain which will have changed,” said Heeney.
New-generation vaccines
The researchers collected genetic sequence data from bird flu viruses recorded by surveillance programmes worldwide, including samples from wildlife, livestock and humans infected with bird flu.
They used computational and evolutionary algorithms to design five AI-optimised synthetic antigens representing the global diversity of bird flu viruses and helping prevent the virus from evading immune protection.
The active ingredient in a vaccine, called an antigen, triggers the body’s immune system to produce a protective response. This trains the body to fight off future infections caused by a pathogen containing this specific antigen.
“Using AI vastly speeds up the process of vaccine design, and then we can test the vaccine candidates in the lab to make sure they’re robust and safe,” said Heeney.
In the new study, the vaccine completely protected mice and ferrets against a range of genetically distinct variants of the virus that causes bird flu — all of which have caused human infections and represent potential pandemic threats. Only half the animals survived exposure to these same viruses when immunised with the World Health Organization's existing bird flu vaccine.
The next step is to test the new bird flu vaccine in human clinical trials, to make it available for use in the event of an outbreak and to expand the new framework to seasonal influenza vaccines and other rapidly evolving RNA viruses
Developed by the University of Cambridge and its company DIOSynVax Ltd, this is the latest in a series of new vaccines whose active ingredient is designed to give lasting protection from thousands of virus variants in a single vaccine.
Earlier this year, the team developed the first fully AI-designed vaccine to be tested in humans, offering lasting protection against a broad range of viruses — such as Ebola and members of the coronavirus group — even as they mutate.
