Every year, flu season comes around. And every year new vaccines are developed to combat it.
Creating an annual flu vaccine involves a combination of researching current strains, identifying the disease’s historical patterns, and predicting the worldwide movement of viruses. Educated guesswork plays a big role as well.
It’s an imperfect process.
The variables can be maddening to overcome, and the logistics surrounding vaccine manufacturing can be unforgiving. Choose wisely and the flu vaccine can be quite effective. Choose poorly and a disease with the potential to kill tens of thousands in the U.S. alone could run rampant.
There has to be a better way. Ted Ross is committed to finding it.
“How do you deal with a vaccine if you are constantly playing catch up?” asks Ross, a Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar in Infectious Diseases in the University of Georgia’s College of Veterinary Medicine. One of the country’s leading infectious disease researchers, Ross came to UGA in 2015 to lead its newly established Center for Vaccines and Immunology.
Read the full article at https://greatcommitments.uga.edu/story/broadly-protected/
