MOVING TARGETS: VIRUS MUTATIONS

New vaccines aim for the heart and may offer wider and more persistent protection

I have a long history of concern about pandemics, going back at least to 2004. That is the year I was teaching “Environmental Biology” for non-majors at Radford University. I assigned term papers on topics that students first ran past me before beginning.

One student’s uncle was a poultry farmer on the NC coast and had cautioned him about the potential seriousness of “bird flu.” I thought “how much do I care if chickens have runny noses. er…beaks?” But then I began to look at avian flu and it’s potential to spread first to, then between humans. And the topic has had my attention and concern ever since. And then Covid happened.

And in the human-science war against communicable viruses, the weak link has always been the capacity of this “pre-biotic entity” (not even officially alive) to produce survivors to any vaccine. The mutated versions then carry a form of DNA that once was a susceptible part of its makeup that made it succumb to yearly vaccinations—but not the next year. The virus is always one step (or more) ahead of the current therapy.

And so, during the Covid year, I often mused aloud: What is needed is the discovery of a molecular weapon that is so broad and effective that it protects against a spectrum of related viruses and over an extended period of years or decades. Find some common viral feature that is the HEART of the beast and fire the Silver Bullet! Could it be that just such a tool is on the horizon?

More details that give credence to my hopes from an informative article via Science Daily: excerpts and a few comments, just click the blue button…