Did AI Just Help Us Discover a Universal COVID Vaccine?

The world is continuing to learn how to live with COVID-19, but we’re still caught under the alarming specter of new variants. A single new strain with more ferocious infectivity and danger could send the world back into a public health emergency, including renewed lockdowns and a resurgence in remote work and education. To that end, there’s been no shortage of work among researchers to design a COVID vaccine that could safeguard people from the whole spectrum of variants—current and future alike.

Several institutions are already racing to develop a universal COVID jab, and now researchers at MIT think they may have found one that could get us across the finish line. If it does end up passing all the tests and making its way into our arms, you’ll have AI to thank.

A new study published in Frontiers in Immunology on Mar. 9 and led by scientists at MIT reports successful experiments to inoculate mice with a new vaccine designed to protect against all COVID variants—even ones that have not emerged yet. The vaccine was developed thanks to discoveries made using AI algorithms, and the new experiments demonstrate the vaccine’s ability to prevent death from COVID infection.

Read more at The Daily Beast.