Slobodan Paessler
University of Texas Medical Branch, USA
Title: Novel platform (wEB) to study flu virus evolution and predict vaccine efficacy
Biography
Biography: Slobodan Paessler
Abstract
Flu epidemics and potential pandemics pose great challenges to public health institutions, scientists and vaccine producers. Creating right vaccine composition for different parts of the world is not trivial and has been historically very problematic. This often resulted in decrease in vaccinations and reduced trust in public health officials. To improve future protection of population against flu we urgently need new methods for vaccine efficacy prediction and vaccine virus selection. Recently, novel bioinformatics platform based on electronic biology was successfully utilized for real-time monitoring of influenza A viruses as well as for prediction of vaccine efficacy in Australia and USA in 2017 and 2018. Here we present wEB platform and its usage in identifying functional biological changes in haemagglutinin protein of influenza A viruses and how this knowledge can be applied for vaccine design, prediction of future vaccine efficacy and real-time virus evolution monitoring.