Dr. Margaret Liu, who has worked extensively in the field of immunology and disease prevention and therapy, spoke Thursday, Nov. 14 about the potentials of DNA vaccines during Elon’s Voices of Discovery series in McCrary Theatre. The Voices of Discovery series brings preeminent scientists and mathematicians to Elon several times a year to share their experiences and perspectives with students.
Liu has an undergraduate degree in chemistry and an M.D. degree from Harvard Medical School, and is a member of the National Institutes of Health NIAID Council, chairman of the Scientific Advisory Group of the International Vaccine Institution in Seoul, South Korea, and a member of the Board of Directors of the American Society of Gene Therapy. She has also served as Vice-Chairman of Transgene in Strasbourg, France, and as a consultant to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which is dedicated to bringing innovations in health and learning to the global community.
Liu discussed how DNA vaccines would bring greater strides than conventional vaccines and treatments in combating worldwide diseases like HIV and AIDS. These diseases have characteristics, such as their structure and various strains and subtypes, that make use of conventional immunization inconvenient or impossible. Conventional immunization relies on infecting a patient with a dead or weakened form of a virus in order to create immunity.
However, DNA vaccines have proved promising, Liu said, because they combat viruses on the level of proteins, which remain constant throughout strains and subtypes, rather than natural antibodies, which rely on a virus’s outside structure to combat the disease. “What we want to do is make an immune response better than what you get with a natural infection with HIV,” she said.
While DNA vaccines have had mixed success in treating HIV in humans thus far, Liu said they seem to have promise in other fields of medicine as well. The technology may be applied to allergies, cancer and autoimmune diseases, as well as infectious diseases like HIV.