Max Delbruck Prize in Biological Physics: Viruses, Immunity and Vaccines

Infectious disease-causing pathogens have plagued humanity since antiquity, and the COVID-19 pandemic has been a vivid reminder of this perpetual existential threat. Vaccination has saved more lives than any other medical procedure, and indeed, effective vaccines have helped control the COVID-19 pandemic. However, we do not have effective vaccines against rapidly mutating viruses, such as HIV; nor do we have a universal vaccine against seasonal variants of influenza or SARS-CoV-2 variants that continue to evolve. The ability to develop effective universal vaccines that protect us from variant strains of mutable viruses will help create a more pandemic-resilient world. I will describe how by bringing together approaches from statistical physics, virology and immunology, progress is being made to address this challenge. In particular, I will focus on approaches that aim to design vaccines and immunization strategies that elicit antibodies that can protect against diverse mutant strains. As I hope to show, this is a problem at the intersection of statistical physics, evolutionary biology, immunology, and vaccine development. The application of fundamental concepts to HIV, influenza and SARS-CoV-2 vaccines will be discussed.