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AI helped to make a new kind of vaccine that can protect people from many types of viruses and stop future pandemics, researchers say. The vaccine is made to fight all coronaviruses, including types that now infect animals but might spread to humans and cause new outbreaks.
The trial is the first where a vaccine made completely by AI has been tested on people, researchers from the University of Cambridge in the U.K. said Friday.
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The experimental jab is intended to be a “universal vaccine” that protects people against a range of viruses that have previously sparked deadly outbreaks, including SARS, MERS and COVID-19. The researchers hope this kind of vaccine might help stop future pandemics.
“We’ve converted vaccine development from being reactive to being future-proof,” Cambridge researcher and study co-author Jonathan Heeney said in a statement.
Vaccines for viruses like the flu and COVID-19 need to be changed often to fight the newest strains.
The new vaccine hopes to create an immune response that will defend against many germs, including some that are found in wild animals and could infect humans later.
“It means we can escape the constant cycle of chasing the virus variants circulating in humans and updating the vaccines to try to catch up, like a dog chasing its tail,” Heeney said.
To create the vaccine’s active part, known as the antigen, the researchers used a computer program that learned from genetic information about sarbecoviruses from around the world.
Almost 40 people took part in the trial from late 2021 to 2023. The researchers said that the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic made the results harder to interpret. It was a Phase 1 trial that checks if something is safe and can be tolerated. It does not aim to fully find out how effective it is.
No serious side effects were recorded. However, the vaccine had only a “modest” impact on the participants’ immune systems, according to the study published in the Journal of Infection.
Data collected during the trial does “not support a robust vaccine-induced increase in antibody responses beyond pre-existing levels,” it added.
A Phase 2 trial with more people will help us learn how well the vaccine protects us.
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