AI enlisted to design vaccines against pandemic threats

UW Medicine will lead one of the seven new centers in a network funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) to prepare against a variety of dangerous pathogens. NIAID is part of the National Institutes of Health. The center will receive $13.6 million a year for three years. The network’s goal is to develop vaccines and antibodies in advance of the possible emergence of infectious diseases that could cause public health crises in the United States and the rest of the world. The network will seek to develop prevention or treatment approaches that will work against many different groups viruses that are transmissible to humans, including pathogens with the potential to cause deadly diseases. The idea is that strategies will be in place to develop safe, effective countermeasures before the need becomes critical. For its part in the network, the UW Medicine-led center will concentrate on machine learning-enabled design...