We are doing research now here at VIDO-InterVac where the goal is to have vaccines ready for the next pathogen, the next disease, when we don't even know what that pathogen looks like. Our goal is to develop these technologies, these vaccines that essentially would cover groups or maybe even families of pathogens. You might have a vaccine that protects against all coronaviruses, for example.
The goal would be to have such vaccines available and stockpiled, sitting somewhere now, so that if we had an outbreak like we saw in Wuhan, we could then quickly utilize that vaccine—even if it's not a perfect vaccine—to contain the outbreak and the spread of the disease as much as possible. Advances in science have made that possible now. We can structurally look at the similarities between these viruses and identify areas we should focus on in developing vaccine candidates.