Artificial intelligence isn't just being used to optimise productivity or complete the annoying tasks that we'd rather not do. Scientists have developed what they describe as the world's first AI-designed vaccine. So, how does it work? And what does it mean? In an article originally published by The Conversation, Neil Mabbott, personal chair of immunopathology, University of Edinburgh, explains everything we need to know. Researchers at the University of Cambridge have developed what they describe as a fundamentally new type of vaccine using artificial intelligence (AI). The vaccine’s key component was designed entirely by AI and has now been tested in people for the first time.The goal is ambitious: a single vaccine that works not just against all known human coronavirus variants, but against related bat viruses that could jump from animals to humans and cause future pandemics.
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Traditional vaccines train our immune system to recognise one specific virus. The problem is that viruses mutate. When they change enough, the vaccine stops working, which is why we need a new flu shot every year and why COVID vaccines have been updated repeatedly since 2021.AI offers a way around this. By analysing genetic data from thousands of related viruses, it can identify the parts that stay the same across different strains and that are unlikely to change over time. Target those stable features, and you have a vaccine that should work against the whole family, not just the strain you started with.This is exactly what the Cambridge team did. They used AI to scan viruses from the sarbecovirus family, which includes the viruses that cause both SARS and COVID, as well as a range of animal coronaviruses – looking for shared features that evolution has left largely untouched. Those features became the basis of the vaccine.
