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