- Could a vaccine prevent cancer?
(electronic music)
In our last episode I talked about
the future of vaccine delivery.
Looking at alternatives to hypodermic needles
as well as different ways
that we could make vaccines more robust
so thy could survive at higher temperatures.
Today I want to concentrate on a list of diseases
that we either have no vaccine for
or the vaccines we have are limited in their effectiveness.
So let's start with influenza.
But Jonathan, I hear you say.
We have flu shots, I get one every year.
I got it just the other day.
What are you talking about?
We do have flu shots but they are
very limited in their usefulness.
For one thing, they only contain
certain strains of the flu each year.
Doctors get together and they look at predictive models
and they make an educated guess over which strains
are gonna be particularly troublesome
and those are the ones that are included
in that year's flu vaccine.
But sometimes you might encounter a different strain of flu
and then you're out of luck.
Also, the flu virus mutates constantly
so eventually the flue virus changes so much
your immune system can't even recognize it
and you have to start all over again
building up that immune response.
But what if you could develop a vaccine
that works against multiple strains of the virus
for multiple years.
That's the goal scientists are working on right now.
They're looking at a certain chain of proteins
that remains consistent from mutation to mutation.
If they can develop a vaccine
that looks for that specific chain of proteins
it could protect against all flu strains
for more than a year.
Think of it, a multi-year universal flu vaccine.
Or how about another disease
that was in the news recently, Ebola.
There are a lot of companies
working on Ebola vaccinations right now.
One of them, Merck actually developed
a vaccine with a 100% efficacy rating.
Now it's still going to take time before that
or some other vaccine gets approved for widespread use
but the results so far have been very promising.
Now let's get to the really tricky diseases, like malaria.
Malaria is caused by a parasite
that lives inside a mosquito.
The parasite's life cycle is pretty complex
which also means our body's immune response to the parasite
is complicated and difficult to understand.
This makes developing a vaccine
for malaria really challenging.
But scientists are hard at work trying to solve this problem
using a technique called DNA vaccines
to create something that would actually
be effective in preventing malaria.
Or how about cancer.
There's certain diseases that are correlated
with cancer forming later on.
So if we can stop those diseases
from spreading in the first place
we might be able to cut back on cancer rates.
And we've already seen this happen.
HPV, which is a virus that's responsible
for 70% of the cases of cervical cancer
can be prevented with a vaccine.
On a similar note, we could also use vaccines
to help prevent the onset of Alzheimer's.
Now Alzheimer's itself is a very complicated process
but one known cause of the disease is the formation
of protein knots called Tau, deep within the brain.
By developing a vaccine
that lets the body's immune system target these proteins
we might be able to prevent Alzheimer's
from ever developing in the first place.
Personally, I find all of this to be really inspirational.
And I love the thought that future generations
will suffer fewer of the diseases
that are prevalent in our time.
You can't get more forward thinking than that.
And I've got a question for you guys this week.
What are some of your ideas on ways to prevent
and treat illness around the globe?
Let's talk about it in the comments below.
Thanks to Toyota for sponsoring our show
and making it possible.
If you enjoyed this episode hit that little Like button.
Join the Forward Thinking Think Tank
by subscribing to the channel.
And then to continue this inspirational train
check out these other videos right over here.
(electronic music)