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Conference Coverage

NFID Annual Conference on Vaccinology Research Wrap-up: COVID-19, Influenza, RSV

William Schaffner, MD

In this podcast, William Schaffner, MD, discusses the key take-home messages from the 2023 Annual Conference on Vaccinology Research, hosted by the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases, including COVID-19 prevention and management, influenza prevention and treatment in children through older adults, and challenges, breakthroughs, and emerging tools in that are development to prevent respiratory syncytial virus.

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TRANSCRIPTION:

Jessica Bard:

Well, thank you so much for joining us, Dr. Schaffner. It's nice to see you. If you don't mind just introducing yourself for the audience, please.

Dr. William Schaffner:

Well, Jessica, it's good to be with you. I'm Dr. William Schaffner. I'm a professor of preventive medicine and infectious diseases here at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center, and I'm also the medical director of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases.

Jessica Bard:

Great. Well, let's get started with our first question here. Please describe some of the biggest take-home messages on COVID-19 prevention and management from the conference.

Dr. William Schaffner:

Well, we've just had a wonderful conference, the Annual Conference on Vaccinology Research for two and a half days. It's brought together people virtually from across the country (and the world) to share their best ideas about vaccines, where we are, where we're going. And apropos of COVID vaccines, I think there were two main messages. The first is that we've thought of these new COVID vaccines, as having been developed very quickly. Of course, that's the truth, but we need to open up the accordion, as it were, because they were the product really of basic scientific research that had been ongoing, building for 20 years. And then when the challenge of COVID arrived, COVID something brand new is something that we as a human population had not encountered before, the science was ready to deal with this new challenge. And it took the information from COVID, its genetic footprint of this virus, and then, indeed in an extraordinarily rapid fashion, was able to create a vaccine that turned out to be remarkably effective and remarkably safe.

Now, creating the vaccine was not the end of the story. On the contrary, it's just the beginning of the story because vaccines in the refrigerator, as I like to say, never yet prevented a single case of infection. You have to move the vaccine from the refrigerator into arms. And as we all know, there's a certain amount of vaccine hesitancy and fatigue out there in the general population. There were studies to show, quite nicely, that there were, in general, two major areas that need to be addressed when trying to persuade, educate, and encourage people to receive new vaccines, COVID-19 as well as others.

The first is how we feel about the vaccine. What is our attitude? Is it the usual normal thing for me and my friends all to get the vaccine? As the psychologists reminded us, we want to normalize that behavior. That's very, very important, and in order to do that we have to communicate effectively with all the diverse populations in this country to try to make it the usual and good thing for ourselves and everyone else to get the vaccine. So, it's how we feel about the vaccine that's so important.

The second piece is equally important, how easy was it to get the vaccine? Now there we did very, very well because it was available in every pharmacy, in many clinics, many doctors' offices. It was readily available, and it was free. As I like to say, we just had to roll up our sleeves, we didn't have to reach for our wallets. And that made the initial acceptance of the vaccine a much more positive event. There are things we can do to improve our communications going forward, that was one of the major lessons from the conference.

Jessica Bard:

I think that was well said. Moving on now to influenza prevention and treatment. What would you say are the biggest take-home messages from the conference?

Dr. William Schaffner:

Well, there was guarded optimism. We're going to go back to the science that's been developed over the last 20 years. There are vaccine researchers, and they were reporting at the conference about their efforts to make better vaccines. And there was this anticipation that now people are working on what we would call a universal influenza vaccine. As we all know, the influenza virus likes to mutate, it likes to change. My goodness, that's why we have to update the vaccine each year to change its composition. Suppose we could get a vaccine that actually protects against a whole variety of different influenza types. Well, that would be a huge advance, it would lead to much greater acceptance of the vaccine by the general population, and we could actually change the way we deliver the vaccine. It wouldn't then be an annual event; we could get the vaccine any time because it would protect against a whole lot of different strains and perhaps provide protection for five or six years. So we wouldn't have to gear up to do a vaccination campaign in the fall, we could give it throughout the year. That would make it much easier and more acceptable.

So, once again, looking to the future hoping to make something very good, our current influenza vaccines, even much better.

Jessica Bard:

Now, moving right along to RSV, let's talk about the challenges and breakthroughs in emerging vaccines and monoclonal antibodies.

Dr. William Schaffner:

RSV, I think everybody, if I could have seen their faces, was smiling because RSV remains one of the great unaddressed winter respiratory infections, very important in children and increasingly appreciated, literally as important as influenza for older adults, particularly those with underlying illnesses. And everybody recognized that we have now two RSV vaccines that have just been licensed. Now the trick will be, as I said before, moving that vaccine from the refrigerator into arms and how are we going to organize vaccination campaigns starting this fall and going into the future. And so there was a lot of anticipation about how that would happen.

Jessica Bard:

What would you say were the most important take-home messages in behavioral science and vaccine outcomes?

Dr. William Schaffner:

Well, the behavioral science was a light motif that went through all of these discussions because, as I said, vaccines in the refrigerator are wonderful, the science can produce those. But then we have to vaccinate people and it has to be accepted. And we know that there has been a diminution in trust, in confidence in authority, in public health officials, and so we are all going to have to get better at doing that.

But in terms of behaviors, one of the sessions that warmed my heart is that we had women leaders in vaccinology participating in a special session. We've done this for several years at the annual Vaccinology Conference, to role model for young women coming into the field about how it is that the leaders have succeeded and become so prominent and to encourage young people, particularly young women to enter the field, young scientists and young aspiring public health officials. And the lessons that the women provided were both inspirational and practical at the same time. And I mean, I'm a fella, but I think they certainly motivated the young women who attended.

Jessica Bard:

And now you alluded to this a couple times, what would you say you anticipate the next 50 years will look like in vaccinology?

Dr. William Schaffner:

Well, there was a special session on that and looking forward, and as you can imagine, scientists are, by their nature, optimistic because they are working to understand nature with the goal of making things better so that our health can be more assured for longer years of life. That theme was clearly there. And people took apart the new science that was available and talked about the possibilities of extending vaccines beyond certain infectious diseases, even into non-infectious disease areas,  Alzheimer's disease, a way to combat opioid addiction perhaps. Oh, these are wonderful ideas that motivate scientists. But at the same time, they also recognize that once we have new vaccines, we have to deliver them effectively to the population. The creation of the vaccine is wonderful. It's the beginning, not the end of a long journey.

Jessica Bard:

Is there anything else that you'd like to add that you think that we missed?

Dr. William Schaffner:

Vaccines are devoted to the prevention of disease–the elimination of a disease. I was motivated to get into medicine because I wanted to, as a classic young person, relieve suffering and make people better. As I got into medicine and learned more about it, the prevention of the disease entirely, ah, that's the highest goal of medicine. And that keeps motivating me and motivates many others as they enter vaccinology and participate in the science and the public health and clinical aspects of delivering vaccines to the largest possible population, not just here in our own country, but around the world.

Jessica Bard:

I think that's well said. Thank you very much for joining us, we appreciate it.

Dr. William Schaffner:

Always a pleasure.

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