Speaker 1: It's Friday, October eight. I'm oscar A Mirrors from the
Speaker 1: Daily Dive podcast in Los Angeles, and this is reopening America.
Speaker 1: Scientists are constantly working on averting the next pandemic, and
Speaker 1: one avenue that is being pursued is a so called
Speaker 1: pan coronavirus vaccine. This would be a shot that could
Speaker 1: block many related viruses all in one. Although still years away,
Speaker 1: they're trying to develop a vaccine that can protect you
Speaker 1: from everything from COVID variant to the common cold. Betsy McKay,
Speaker 1: senior writer at The Wall Street Journal, joins us for
Speaker 1: the effort to make a universal vaccine. Thanks for joining us, Betsy,
Speaker 1: It's nice to be here. Thanks. So we're obviously still
Speaker 1: going through the COVID pandemic right now, trying to get
Speaker 1: as many people as we can vaccinated, but there's a
Speaker 1: lot of forward thinking we're looking toward, you know, what
Speaker 1: could be happening next. And one of the things that
Speaker 1: scientists are working on is kind of this idea of
Speaker 1: a universal or pan coronavirus vaccines, a single vaccine that
Speaker 1: could work for many different types of coronaviruses. As we know,
Speaker 1: you know, we've had a learning course over the course
Speaker 1: of this pandemic. These coronaviruses cause anything from the common cold.
Speaker 1: We've seen stars, we've seen mers, you know a lot
Speaker 1: of different things. So scientists are working for a big
Speaker 1: catch all type of vaccines. So that's to help us
Speaker 1: walk through some of it. What are we learning, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean the idea that researchers in emerging infections disease
Speaker 1: are working toward our vaccines that basically protect you against
Speaker 1: the whole family of viruses or a group of viruses
Speaker 1: that are problematic, and in this case, it would be
Speaker 1: coronaviruses and within that the stars like viruses they call them.
Speaker 1: There's a technical term for it. We'll leave it at that.
Speaker 1: And it's basically the virus that is affecting us now,
Speaker 1: causing the pandemic, but also caused stars in two thousands three,
Speaker 1: and it looks like there are several that can infect humans.
Speaker 1: So the idea is you create one vaccine that targets
Speaker 1: all of those viruses at once, and then if another
Speaker 1: one comes along, it's very likely that the vaccine would
Speaker 1: protect it against it or protect against it enough to
Speaker 1: stop an outbreak from becoming bigger. And we're seeing this
Speaker 1: being worked on, you know, through the the U. S. Army,
Speaker 1: the branches of the of Walter Reid of Walter Read
Speaker 1: Medical Center to you know, you know, it's there's a
Speaker 1: lot of effort. There's other groups that are also working
Speaker 1: on this. There's a lot of effort into it. So
Speaker 1: I talked to several researchers and one was at the
Speaker 1: Walter Read Army Institute of Research, who said, you know,
Speaker 1: these types of vaccines we've kind of targeting, you know,
Speaker 1: a universal vaccine is sort of the way out of
Speaker 1: this pandemic and also sort of the cycle of epidemics.
Speaker 1: I mean, researchers in this field have been battling one
Speaker 1: epidemic after another over the past decade or two, and
Speaker 1: so so they're developing one and others are developing vaccine
Speaker 1: that would target both the stars like viruses. As I said,
Speaker 1: so both the variants of the current virus and maybe
Speaker 1: somebody onto it, some that would that would um prevent
Speaker 1: the next you know, some that might be the next
Speaker 1: pandemic virus. One of the issues is we have a
Speaker 1: very effective vaccines right now, but everybody's worried about what
Speaker 1: if another variant comes along that the vaccines we have
Speaker 1: now doesn't work against and we don't want to be
Speaker 1: back to square one. So the idea is, if you
Speaker 1: can get a vaccine that would neutralize, as they say,
Speaker 1: any variant, then there's less to worry about. You know,
Speaker 1: we don't we know that we'll have something in the
Speaker 1: armament if that doesn't happen. Hopefully it doesn't, but it
Speaker 1: may be needed to end the pandemic. You know, and
Speaker 1: in this case of a universal type vaccine, this is
Speaker 1: going to be something that's going to take a longer time.
Speaker 1: You know. It's not going to be like the COVID vaccine,
Speaker 1: which you know was done all on the up and up,
Speaker 1: but you know, it did happen pretty fast. This is
Speaker 1: gonna be a lot slower pace because they need to
Speaker 1: kind of catch all the other viruses associated with it.
Speaker 1: And so how do they actually do that, because you know,
Speaker 1: I'm engining, you know, just an extra large syringe, you know,
Speaker 1: a bunch of extra stuff that they're packing into one shot.
Speaker 1: But they really kind of start off with with one
Speaker 1: and start layering things on top of the other, looking
Speaker 1: for those similarities and those viruses so they can kind
Speaker 1: of hope to avoid those. Yeah, exactly one thing you
Speaker 1: do if you look in the blood of people who've
Speaker 1: been infected for antibodies. They're called broadly neutralizing antibodies, so
Speaker 1: basically antibodies that look like they would fight off several
Speaker 1: different types of coronaviruses. And then you use those too,
Speaker 1: sort of reverse engineer and figure out what would a
Speaker 1: vaccine have to look like. Now, Walter read, what they
Speaker 1: are doing is they they created designed what's called a nanoparticle,
Speaker 1: a very small particle looks like a small soccer ball,
Speaker 1: and they stick copies of spike proteins all over. I
Speaker 1: think we all know these days what a spike protein is,
Speaker 1: but if we don't, it's a piece. It's the piece
Speaker 1: of a coronavirus that sticks out and is actually responsible
Speaker 1: for infecting yourself. And the idea is that becomes part
Speaker 1: of a vaccine and when it's injected into you, it
Speaker 1: will help your body develop antibodies against several viruses. The
Speaker 1: ideas you put you put spike proteins for different coronaviruses
Speaker 1: on there, or what you look for on a variety
Speaker 1: of related viruses. Are pieces of the spike proteins that
Speaker 1: are similar across the viruses, so and you can target that.
Speaker 1: So it's from that or studying several viruses at once.
Speaker 1: Are these going to be mRNA type vaccines like maderna advisor?
Speaker 1: Are they looking at different ways to make this this
Speaker 1: universal one? So there are different technologies being used. At
Speaker 1: the University of North Carolina researchers did a study using
Speaker 1: the mRNA technology. Others are using other technologies, and so
Speaker 1: you could end up with several front types. Right now,
Speaker 1: they're at the stage of testing these vaccine candidates in
Speaker 1: animals and testing them for a few basically the stars
Speaker 1: like viruses right to see if if they'll work against that.
Speaker 1: If they do, then the next step would be to
Speaker 1: broaden even further and try to protect it against an
Speaker 1: even broader group of coronaviruses that would include Middle East
Speaker 1: respiratory syndrome. So first they're trying to get the structure
Speaker 1: of the vaccine right, and once they do that, then
Speaker 1: they can start putting in pieces of other viruses and
Speaker 1: see if they can kind of generate that broad protection
Speaker 1: that you would need in order to be protected against
Speaker 1: the family of viruses. Well, I mean it's a it's
Speaker 1: a great effort, as I mentioned, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: energy behind it and it would be would be pretty
Speaker 1: amazing to get something that could be more broadly protective.
Speaker 1: So this is looking toward the future and hopefully we
Speaker 1: can get there. Betsy Mackay, Senior writer at The Wall
Speaker 1: Street Journal, you very much for joining us. Thank you
Speaker 1: as always for having me. I'm all Scar Ramiers and
Speaker 1: this has been reopening America. Don't forget that. For today's
Speaker 1: big news stories, you can check me out on the
Speaker 1: Daily Dive podcast every Monday to Friday. So follow us
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