Cloud computing support accelerates COVID-19 vaccine improvements
For the last 11 months, UBC biochemistry and molecular biology professor Leonard Foster and his team have been studying how SARS-CoV-2 – the virus responsible for COVID-19 – attacks the human body, in hopes of developing a more targeted vaccine with fewer side effects.
Prof. Foster is confident that this technology will accelerate the development of second-generation vaccine candidates.
“There are many different approaches to developing a vaccine,” says Prof. Foster. “The current COVID-19 vaccines use a brute-force approach that throws everything we know about the virus at our immune system and hopes that there is something in there that will cause an immune response. But by studying how the virus actually causes disease, we can apply a more targeted approach and develop a more effective vaccine with minimal side effects.”
Prof. Foster...
