In a quest to thwart future pandemics, the King Lab has made significant strides toward the development of universal vaccines, as recently noted by the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Traditional vaccines, while crucial, can only target specific strains of a disease. Universal vaccines, on the other hand, are meant to train the immune system to combat all versions of a pathogen, including strains yet to evolve.
To bring universal protection closer to reality, the King Lab is using protein design to create custom protein nanoparticles that can be decorated with different viral proteins. Such vaccines allow the immune system to see up to 60 different strains of a pathogen at once, which may lead to better protection.
