Robert W. Finberg, MD, the Richard M. Haidack Professor of Medicine and chair and professor of medicine, talked to Worcester News Tonight about research being done at UMass Medical School that may lead to better flu vaccines. The work, part of a $12 million project, uses deep genetic sequencing and bioinformatic approaches to predict how viruses change and evolve in response to drugs and the human immune system.
“For influenza, we are working on a major project to determine how the virus evolves so we can determine what next year’s virus will be,” Dr. Finberg told Worcester News Tonight.
The ability to predict and more accurately select which strains of influenza are likely to cause severe illness in humans could markedly improve the effectiveness of the yearly flu vaccine.
