Emerging Innovator of the Year
NUtech Ventures
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11/01/2019
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The Emerging Innovator of the Year award went to Eric Weaver, assistant professor of biological sciences. He is developing a universal flu vaccine using an epigraph model, which has 16 components rather than the typical four. This goal of this research is to effectively protect against all known flu strains, resulting in vaccines that could be used for animals and humans.
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- [00:00:00.280](soft electronic music)
- [00:00:02.830]So my research focuses
- [00:00:04.440]on designing and making the
- [00:00:05.880]best influenza vaccines that we can make.
- [00:00:07.970]So, the diversity at influenza is a big challenge,
- [00:00:11.670]and we design the best immunogen vaccines
- [00:00:14.800]that we can get the best protection
- [00:00:16.920]against the diversity of influenzas.
- [00:00:18.747]And then we also work on how do we deliver the vaccine?
- [00:00:22.170]So how you deliver it is very important.
- [00:00:24.710]We actually use viruses to deliver our vaccine.
- [00:00:28.510]It's kind of a tricky Trojan Horse deal
- [00:00:31.250]where we're taking a virus that causes mild colds,
- [00:00:34.810]and we attenuate it so it can't replicate and cause disease.
- [00:00:38.300]And it actually delivers our influenza vaccine.
- [00:00:41.360]We are focused on vaccines for animals,
- [00:00:44.928]for swine, and for humans.
- [00:00:47.700]The whole idea is that, you know,
- [00:00:49.820]to protect swine from flu
- [00:00:51.440]we're going to reduce the chances
- [00:00:53.070]of zoonotic transmission from swine to humans.
- [00:00:56.690]Actually, that's where we're making
- [00:00:57.980]some of our best achievements so far,
- [00:00:59.950]the most progress has been with the swine.
- [00:01:02.800]The vaccine that we get works well
- [00:01:05.080]because its multivalent.
- [00:01:06.780]So it works against, right now, four different strains.
- [00:01:09.380]So you're going to get a quadrivalent vaccine.
- [00:01:12.650]The mentality or the mindset of scientists
- [00:01:15.980]over the past 10, 20, 30 years has been
- [00:01:19.480]that these vaccines need to be magic bullet vaccines.
- [00:01:22.380]And that one vaccine is going to protect against everything.
- [00:01:25.970]And we've kind of taken a different approach,
- [00:01:28.670]and so instead of trying to create a vaccine
- [00:01:31.470]with four components to it that'll protect against flu,
- [00:01:35.570]we're designing vaccines that are gonna have 16 components.
- [00:01:38.910]And even though with 16 components
- [00:01:40.710]it's a more complex vaccine,
- [00:01:42.710]it's going to give you that protection
- [00:01:45.070]that gives you cross-protective immunity
- [00:01:47.320]against many or all the different strains
- [00:01:49.730]that are out there.
- [00:01:50.670]The realization and the breakthrough
- [00:01:52.430]that we're seeing is that it works.
- [00:01:57.130]When we mix these together, they still work.
- [00:02:00.450]They're not interfering with each other.
- [00:02:02.460]They are all effective together.
- [00:02:05.530]The impact of the work that we're doing
- [00:02:08.190]is particularly important in the healthcare industry.
- [00:02:11.750]More people die of flu every year
- [00:02:13.870]in the United States than HIV.
- [00:02:16.410]A good estimate is 80 to 180 billion dollars a year
- [00:02:20.940]for healthcare costs for inpatient influenza treatments.
- [00:02:25.880]If we could reduce that by half
- [00:02:28.110]that would be billions of dollars in savings.
- [00:02:30.810]My ultimate goal is to reduce that to nearly zero.
- [00:02:35.310]That very few people would need to go to the hospital
- [00:02:39.600]because they were vaccinated, the vaccine worked well,
- [00:02:41.860]and they didn't get the flu to begin with.
- [00:02:44.120]I mean, I would like to thank NUtech.
- [00:02:46.170]They were fantastic.
- [00:02:47.600]Their commitment and investment
- [00:02:49.240]into the work that we're doing
- [00:02:50.770]is going to be used for many, many years to come.
- [00:02:54.710]It's been really great, actually, to see them come in,
- [00:02:58.210]see the value in it,
- [00:02:59.900]and to invest their time and energy in it.
- [00:03:03.850]It's more than any place I've worked in in the past.
- [00:03:07.230]It's motivating.
- [00:03:08.460]It's inspirational.
- [00:03:11.330]You just want to go make it better and better and better.
- [00:03:14.124](soft electronic music)
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