The Early Career Vaccinologist network held their first virtual journal club earlier this month and was a great success. As the network is spread out geographically, it is taking advantage of the latest technology to bring people together. This meeting was a good example of that, with the Pirbright Institute, the Roslin institute and the University of Stirling either linked through a Joint Academic Network (JANET) or conference call. Seven people took part, and everyone contributed to an interesting discussion of the paper that was presented by Dr Andrew Broadbent at the Pirbright Institute. Despite being in several different locations, the meeting felt like a small round-table discussion, and everyone found it a useful experience.
The paper discussed was: 'Deliberate reduction of haemagglutinin and neuraminidase expression of influenza virus leads to an ultraprotective live vaccine in mice’ by Yang et al. 2013. Codon pair bias deoptimisation is a relatively new technology that is gaining momentum as a novel vaccine platform. It is a means of generating synthetic attenuated viruses that are used as live vaccines, and it has already been successfully applied to influenza, respiratory syncytial virus and polio. The approach is being expanded to veterinary viruses and it is something that veterinary vaccinologists should be aware of. This journal club introduced the technology, and discussed the pros and cons for use in the field.
Slides from this presentation can be found here