Can vaccines for wildlife prevent human pandemics?
By Rodrigo Pérez Ortega
Studies suggest that self-disseminating vaccines could prevent the 'spillover' of animal viruses into humans as pandemic diseases.
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Recently in Nature Ecology & Evolution, a pair of biologists at the University of Idaho argued for that approach. The idea of “self-disseminating” vaccines has floated through epidemiological circles for decades, conceived mainly as a tool for protecting the health of wildlife. But the mathematical biologist Scott Nuismer and the evolutionary biologist James Bull have refreshed the proposal with evidence from their own modeling and other experimental work, which suggests that self-disseminating vaccines could be a safe and practical way to head off zoonotic pandemics as well. The idea still has hurdles to clear before it can be put into practice, but researchers reached for comment were generally intrigued by its potential.
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A transferable vaccine can be given to a bat, for example, as a paste on its fur. Upon the animal’s return to its colony, other bats would groom it and get exposed to the vaccine too. The spread of this type of vaccine would be limited, but in Nuismer and Bull’s models, transferable vaccines could achieve high enough levels of immunization to potentially eradicate pathogens in wild populations.
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The second type of self-disseminating vaccine, the transmissible one, consists of live modified viruses that propagate a weakened form of a disease. They would be ideal for large wild populations because even just a few individual animals vaccinated with them could spread immunity widely.
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For Maria Elena Bottazzi, a vaccinologist at Texas Children’s Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine who is currently racing to produce a COVID-19 vaccine, the concept of self-disseminating vaccines to prevent spillovers “is definitely intriguing.” The effort could also help to highlight the interconnection between the health of humans, animals, plants and the environment as a whole. “We have to stop being reactive and [trying] to stop something in the middle of the crisis,” she said.
“If you look at the economics of it, it’s a no-brainer,” Streicker said. Governments and philanthropists around the world have invested billions in finding cures and vaccines for COVID-19. “Just imagine if we invested some tiny fraction of that intervention, and particularly into new strategies for prevention,” he said. “We could really make huge strides.”