Influenza evolution: a major challenge in vaccine development
by Nicholas Wu, PhD
Assistant Professor, Biochemistry
Carle Illinois College of Medicine
Innovation Grand Rounds
Friday, October 8, 2021
noon – 1:00 p.m. Presentation by Nicholas Wu
1:00 – 1:30 p.m. Reflection & Dialogue
Virtual: go.illinois.edu/innovationgrandrounds
Abstract:
The effectiveness of the seasonal influenza vaccine is far from ideal. Dr. Nicholas Wu will highlight the shortcomings of conventional egg-grown influenza vaccine and the challenge of developing a universal influenza vaccine due to the evolutionary capacity of the virus. His talk will also describe a high-throughput experimental approach to examine the replication fitness of many mutations in parallel.
Biography:
Dr. Nicholas Wu is an Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign with joint appointments in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences in the Department of Biochemistry and Carle Illinois College of Medicine int he Department of Biomedical and Translational Sciences. He received his B.S. from the University of Virginia and his Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles. He then completed his postdoctoral training at Scripps Research. At UIUC, the Wu lab studies the molecular features of interaction between antibodies and viral antigens.