Precision vaccines: bringing precision medicine to vaccinology | Ofer Levy | TEDxBeaconStreet
Other than clean drinking water, vaccines are the most important biomedical intervention known to humans. The current vaccine schedule is a major success story which prevents millions of cases of severe infection in vulnerable populations around the world, such as the young and elderly. Vaccines face challenges, including the need for multiple booster doses, challenges in immunizing populations with distinct immunity, development of vaccines against challenging targets like HIV, as well as anti-vaccine attitudes. New approaches to enhancing vaccine discovery and development include use of big data approaches ("systems biology") to better understand vaccine action, methods that allow us to test vaccines outside the body in human tissue culture to predict optimal action towards a given target population, and use of molecules that can boost an immune response ("adjuvants"). Use of these technologies coupled with increasing appreciation of the need to tailor vaccines for their intended recipients will usher in a new era of precision vaccination with major public health benefits. Ofer Levy MD, PhD, is director of the Precision Vaccines Program at Boston Children's Hospital.
This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx