Blending machine learning with systems human immunology, Professor Adriana Tomic is working toward creating effective, long-memory vaccines for strong immunity against pandemic-potential viruses.
By Chloe Wojtanik and Maureen Stanton
The flu affects about a billion people annually, abruptly forcing people to take sick leave, scramble for childcare coverage, and other disruptions. While the majority will suffer chills, runny noses and body aches, others will face serious complications and death. Flu kills about 650,000 people globally each year, and millions are hospitalized.
Adriana Tomic, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering, virology, immunology, and microbiology, and a Hariri Institute junior faculty fellow, is working to solve this complex problem with her team at the Atomic Lab.
The Atomic Lab is a systems immunology group at the Boston University National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories (NEIDL). The researchers there are working on understanding the body’s defense, or immune system, figuring out how to boost it, and speeding up the creation of new vaccines. The researchers are specifically aiming to improve vaccines and treatments for major infectious diseases, especially those that can spread quickly and widely, causing pandemics like the flu and coronaviruses. Their work stands out because they merge together multiple fields of study: infection biology, immunology, vaccine development, engineering, artificial intelligence (AI), and computer science. This interdisciplinary approach focuses on the complexities of human immunology before extending to animal studies, thus prioritizing human immunology over animal-based studies from the very beginning.