The SHIELD: La Jolla Institute for Immunology Gets $49M to Drug Herpesviruses

The program will create vaccines for various elusive herpesviruses that infect most Americans and cause cancer, autoimmune disease, and birth defects

“These are not vaccines against viruses you might get—they’re vaccines against viruses you already have,” said Saphire. “It may be enough for the [Ebola and SARS-CoV-2] vaccines to knock down the amount of virus a few logs, and your immune system can mop up the rest. The trouble with these herpesviruses is that even if one or two get by and infect, you have a lifelong infection. So, it’s not enough to knock it down a couple of logs—you need to prevent infection, or what we call sterile immunity. But you have to clear all [the viruses], and that is just such a high bar; it’s really, really hard to get there.”

America’s SHIELD, herpesvirus avengers
The only way to untangle this collection of interwoven problems that has made herpesviruses so elusive to vaccine developers is a massive coordinated effort of specialized groups performing complementary research, which is exactly what America’s SHIELD plans to do. Some researchers, including Saphire’s group, which specializes in high-resolution imaging, will solve molecular structures of potential vaccine targets.

“We are uncovering how the different molecules of this virus are folded up, what is the target shape, and revealing how to hit them and target them and design the vaccine material,” said Saphire.

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