Global Virus Network reaffirms support for mRNA vaccines and collaborative vaccine research

Scientists throughout the world must commit to advancing the development of mRNA vaccine technology and reassure the public of its safety

Global Virus Network

Facebook

XLinkedInWeChatBlueskyMessageWhatsApp
Email

Tampa, FL, USA – The Global Virus Network (GVN), a coalition of leading human and animal virologists from 80+ Centers of Excellence and Affiliates in more than 40 countries dedicated to advancing pandemic preparedness, is unequivocally committed to the continued development and deployment of mRNA vaccines and the global scientific collaboration that makes such innovation possible.

Vaccination remains one of public health’s greatest achievements, preventing an estimated 4.4 million deaths globally each year. Building on this foundation, mRNA vaccine platforms have emerged as one of the most significant biomedical innovations of the 21st century, fundamentally reshaping our ability to respond rapidly and effectively to emerging viral threats. The real-world impact of mRNA vaccines has been striking. Between 2020 and 2024, COVID-19 vaccines are estimated to have prevented approximately 7.5 million deaths globally. In the United States alone, over 298 million mRNA vaccine doses were administered within the first six months of rollout, with fewer than 1% of recipients experiencing significant adverse reactions or complications. Furthermore, clinical data showed that between March 2021 and January 2022, mRNA vaccines reduced the death rate by about 90%, and were 94% effective against severe disease during the Omicron wave.

Unlike traditional vaccines, which use weakened or inactivated viruses or parts of the pathogen to stimulate immunity, mRNA vaccines deliver synthetic genetic instructions that teach cells to produce a harmless viral protein. This approach primes the immune system without exposing individuals to the actual pathogen, offering a safe and adaptable platform with broad potential. Although propelled into the global spotlight by COVID-19, mRNA technology has been under development for decades, with early applications targeting rabies, influenza, and Zika, and more recently, showing promise in cancer immunotherapy.

"mRNA vaccine technology has fundamentally changed our ability to respond quickly and precisely to emerging viral threats," said Johan Neyts, PhD, Director of the GVN Center of Excellence at KU Leuven in Belgium, and a global leader in antiviral drug and vaccine development. "Various members of the GVN are working across continents to accelerate innovation in mRNA-based vaccines, not only for coronaviruses but also for dengue, Zika, Lassa fever, and other high-consequence pathogens."

The GVN emphasizes that scientific transparency, public health engagement, and a global commitment to research must remain at the heart of mRNA vaccine deployment strategies. "Global acceptance of vaccines, especially new platforms like mRNA, depends not only on scientific rigor but also on building and sustaining trust within communities," said Heidi Larson, PhD, Founding Director of the Vaccine Confidence Project and an internationally recognized expert in vaccine confidence and risk communication. " The GVN serves a critical function in this effort by convening trusted scientific voices around the world and advancing transparent, culturally informed engagement that helps bridge the gap between innovation and public confidence."

Around the world, governments and research institutions are advancing mRNA development and infrastructure as part of their pandemic preparedness and public health strategies. From South Africa to South Korea, Brazil to Belgium, GVN Centers are playing pivotal roles in these efforts.

“South Africa is leading a transformative moment in global health by building sustainable mRNA vaccine research and manufacturing ecosystems,” said Quarraisha Abdool Karim, PhD, Co-Director of the GVN Center of Excellence at CAPRISA in South Africa and an internationally esteemed epidemiologist advancing health equity and scientific capacity across Africa. “By harnessing mRNA innovation locally, we’re not only responding to today’s needs but also empowering future generations of African scientists.”

The GVN stands committed to advocating for a globally coordinated approach to the development and deployment of mRNA vaccines that includes:

• Expanding mRNA research and manufacturing capacity in low- and middle-income countries to close gaps in access and build regional resilience.
• Supporting next-generation mRNA innovation, including thermostable and self-amplifying formulations, to improve global distribution and longevity.
• Combating vaccine misinformation through collaborative initiatives with educators, journalists, and community leaders to ensure scientifically accurate, culturally sensitive messaging.

As a science-driven organization, the GVN is dedicated to advancing pandemic preparedness by fostering the exchange of knowledge, building global training capacity, accelerating translational research, and supporting effective and equitable responses to viral threats. mRNA vaccines are not just a product of biomedical ingenuity; they are a testament to what global collaboration can achieve when rooted in evidence and transparency.

###

About the Global Virus Network (GVN)
The Global Virus Network (GVN) is a worldwide coalition comprising 80+ Virology Centers of Excellence and Affiliates across 40+ countries, whose mission is to facilitate pandemic preparedness against viral pathogens and diseases that threaten public health globally. GVN advances knowledge of viruses through (i) data-driven research and solutions, (ii) fostering the next generation of virology leaders, and (iii) enhancing global resources for readiness and response to emerging viral threats. GVN provides the essential expertise required to discover and diagnose viruses that threaten public health, understand how such viruses spread illnesses, and facilitate the development of diagnostics, therapies, and treatments to combat them. GVN coordinates and collaborates with local, national, and international scientific institutions and government agencies to provide real-time virus informatics, surveillance, and response resources and strategies.  GVN's pandemic preparedness mission is achieved by focusing on Education & Training, Qualitative & Quantitative Research, and Global Health Strategies & Solutions. The GVN is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization. For more information, please visit www.gvn.org.

Media Contact:
Nora Samaranayake
nsamaranayake@gvn.org

 

Unpacking chaos to protect your morning coffee

U-M researchers untangle the ecological dynamics of ants in Puerto Rico

University of Michigan

X

LinkedIn
MessageWhatsAppEmail

Images 

 

To help manage agricultural practices with fewer or no pesticides, University of Michigan researchers say they need to understand how ecological systems work on agricultural lands.

 

Now, U-M researchers John Vandermeer and Ivette Perfecto have used two ecological theories to describe a tangle of interactions between three ant species and a recently introduced fly that preys on one of the ant species. Their work on a coffee farm in Puerto Rico shows that the interaction between the ants and the predator fly creates chaotic patterns—chaos in the classical sense, in that natural populations are subjected to fluctuations depending on the interactions of organisms within a system. 

 

These chaotic patterns mean that any one of the four insect species could be dominant at any point in time. Understanding which ants may be dominant over time may help farmers use the ants to manage pests on their farms. Their study, supported by the National Science Foundation, is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

 

"Two of the three ant species we studied are really important agents of biological control of two of the important pests in coffee," said Vandermeer, U-M professor of ecology and evolutionary biology. "We would like, or a farmer would like, to be able to predict when the ants are going to be there, and when they're not going to be there. And it turns out that that kind of prediction is going to be pretty difficult."

 

For three decades, Vandermeer and Perfecto, a professor at the U-M School for Environment and Sustainability, have been studying ant interactions in the coffee farm's agricultural setting. Their goal is to help transform how agriculture is done—but to do so, we need to first understand the ecology of agricultural systems, they say.

 

"We believe that the current international agricultural system with its use of pesticides and chemicals is not contributing to the welfare of anybody, especially the farmers, and is actually contributing quite a bit to global climate change," Vandermeer said. "We take the position that in order to incorporate the rules of ecology into the development of new forms of agriculture, we need to understand what those rules are and how those rules work."

 

In the tropics, ants are dominant, Vandermeer says, and often involved in agriculture as agents of controlling pests. But using an ant species to control pests can be complicated: The dominance of the ant being used as a biological control depends on what other species of ants—as well as other types of insects—there are in the system. 

 

In this system, Vandermeer and Perfecto examined two types of ecological behavior: intransitive loop cyclic behavior and predator-mediated coexistence. Intransitive loop cyclic behavior means that if there's a group of three ant species, Ant A might be dominant over Ant B, Ant B might dominate Ant C, but Ant C could dominate Ant A. 

 

When a predator is thrown into the mix, these dynamics become even more complicated. Among the three species of ants that Vandermeer and Perfecto study, one species is dominant. But the recently introduced fly preys upon the dominant ant. This predator-prey relationship not only affects the dominant ant, it has downstream effects on the other two ant species, allowing any of the four species to become the dominant species at different points of time. This is an example of predator-mediated coexistence. 

 

The waxing and waning of the predator fly and its ant target, as well as the change of dominance in the ant species, are called oscillations. By overlapping and modeling these two oscillating ecological principles, the researchers could examine how the principles introduce chaos into the system. 

 

The results are ... chaotic. But by plotting both of these oscillating behaviors, the researchers were able to see that at certain times, the whole system looked like a predator-prey cycle, and at other times, the system looked like an intransitive loop oscillation.

 

This could mean—in theory—the researchers could get a window into when each insect species was going to be the dominant species.

 

"The good news is that the chaotic patterns of the insects are really very interesting from an inherent intellectual sense. The bad news is that it's not really as simple as it might seem to base agricultural practices on ecological principles because the ecological principles themselves are way more complicated than simply finding a poison that kills the pests," Vandermeer said.  

 

"What we're uncovering, we think, over the past 30 years or so are some of those complications that come out if you're serious about putting ecology into the fundamental operations of the agricultural system."

Study: Keystone predator and keystone intransitivity and the rescue of a completely subdominant species. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2421005122

---

Journal

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

DOI

10.1073/pnas.2421005122 

 SPACE/COSMOS

Meet IDEA: An AI assistant to help geoscientists explore Earth and beyond

University of Hawaii at Manoa

FacebookXLinkedInWeChatBlueskyMessageWhatsAppEmail

 

image: 

One of the 94 sea level gauges maintained by the UH Sea Level Center is stationed in Chuuk, Micronesia.

view more 

Credit: UH Sea Level Center

A new artificial intelligence tool developed by researchers at the University of Hawai‘i (UH) at Mānoa is making it easier for scientists to explore complex geoscience data—from tracking sea levels on Earth to analyzing atmospheric conditions on Mars. Called the Intelligent Data Exploring Assistant (IDEA), the software framework combines the power of large language models, like those used in ChatGPT, with scientific data, tailored instructions, and computing resources. By simply providing questions in everyday language, researchers can ask IDEA to retrieve data, run analyses, generate plots, and even review its own results—opening up new possibilities for research, education, and scientific discovery. Their work was published recently in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Machine Learning and Computation.

“We built a prototype assistant that lets scientists ask plain-language questions and get back working code, clear explanations, and even publication-ready figures—in minutes,” said Matthew Widlansky, lead author of the study and associate director of the UH Sea Level Center, which is part of the Cooperative Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research in the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology. “Our goal was to lower the barrier between geophysical data and the people trying to understand it."

Widlansky and Nemanja Komar, co-author on the study and the software engineer behind the project, designed the Station Explorer Assistant—or SEA, as it’s called at the UH Sea Level Center—as a prototype built on the broader IDEA framework. SEA demonstrates how the framework can be applied to global sea level observations, helping researchers and students explore coastal change through natural language interactions.

“With the Station Explorer Assistant, users don’t need to write a single line of code to analyze tide gauge data, track sea level rise, or assess flooding occurrence,” said Widlansky.

“An exciting part of this work is how easily the IDEA framework can be adapted to explore new datasets,” added Komar. “We even shifted from sea level records to dust storms on Mars—just by changing the instructions and data source.”

Still, the researchers caution that AI-generated analyses aren’t foolproof. “SEA and other IDEA-based applications can make mistakes, like miscalculating a trend,” Widlansky noted. “That’s why human oversight remains essential—we’re building tools to assist scientists, not replace them.”

Creating a tide gauge data assistant

To build the SEA tool, Widlansky and Komar connected a large language model service from OpenAI, similar to what powers ChatGPT, with access to read from the UH Sea Level Center’s data archive. They also provided the model with domain-specific instructions: essentially a virtual user manual for analyzing tide gauge data. A secure computing environment at UH then runs any code the model generates.

This setup allows the assistant to analyze coastal water level observations, assess sea level trends, and even describe results—without the user writing computer code.

“By incorporating tide gauge measurements with an interactive, expert AI assistant, we give scientists and students a new way to explore how rising seas and high‑tide flooding affect the world’s coastlines—no specialized software or coding ability required,” continued Widlansky. 

The work illustrates UH’s role in translating advanced research into practical tools for island resilience and STEM training in Hawai‘i.

Expanding applications for IDEA

While SEA focuses on sea level data, the underlying IDEA framework is designed to work across a wide range of geoscience domains. In one example from the study, the researchers applied IDEA to atmospheric data from Mars—an area they had never worked with before—and were surprised by how easily the assistant adapted to the new dataset with just a change in instructions and data source.

This flexibility is central to IDEA’s design. As an open-source, general-purpose framework, it can be customized for different research problems, from ocean forecasting to land use change, or even planetary science.

Although still a prototype, SEA is available online for scientists or university students to try out and test. Developers are encouraged to explore the IDEA framework on GitHub and experiment with adapting it to their own data or using it with other large language model services. The team welcomes feedback and collaboration to help improve IDEA and expand its scientific applications. Users of SEA and IDEA can provide feedback by emailing idea-dev-grp@hawaii.edu.

Looking ahead, the researchers plan to expand IDEA’s capabilities and user base. Future improvements include automated checks to reduce plotting errors, support for additional data sources, and a new feature that will help users build their own assistants for other geoscience challenges. As AI tools like SEA and IDEA continue to evolve, Widlansky and Komar hope they will serve as accelerators of discovery and as gateways toward making scientific exploration more accessible to students, educators, and researchers in Hawai‘i and beyond.

This artist's concept illustrates a Martian dust storm, which might also crackle with electricity.

Credit

NASA

DOI

10.1029/2025JH000649 

Method of Research

Computational simulation/modeling

Article Title

Building an intelligent data exploring assistant for geoscientists

Planets without water could still produce certain liquids, a new study finds

Lab experiments show “ionic liquids” can form through common planetary processes and might be capable of supporting life even on waterless planets.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Facebook

LinkedIn
MessageWhatsAppEmail

 

image: 

Ionic liquids formed by reacting nitrogen-containing organics with sulfuric acid show high viscosity, diverse colors, and textures. 

view more 

Credit: Rachana Agrawal

Water is essential for life on Earth. So, the liquid must be a requirement for life on other worlds. For decades, scientists’ definition of habitability on other planets has rested on this assumption. 

But what makes some planets habitable might have very little to do with water. In fact, an entirely different type of liquid could conceivably support life in worlds where water can barely exist. That’s a possibility that MIT scientists raise in a study appearing this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 

From lab experiments, the researchers found that a type of fluid known as an ionic liquid can readily form from chemical ingredients that are also expected to be found on the surface of some rocky planets and moons. Ionic liquids are salts that exist in liquid form below about 100 degrees Celsius. The team’s experiments showed that a mixture of sulfuric acid and certain nitrogen-containing organic compounds produced such a liquid. On rocky planets, sulfuric acid may be a byproduct of volcanic activity, while nitrogen-containing compounds have been detected on several asteroids and planets in our solar system, suggesting the compounds may be present in other planetary systems. 

Ionic liquids have extremely low vapor pressure and do not evaporate; they can form and persist at higher temperatures and lower pressures than what liquid water can tolerate. The researchers note that ionic liquid can be a hospitable environment for some biomolecules, such as certain proteins that can remain stable in the fluid.

The scientists propose that, even on planets that are too warm or that have atmospheres are too low-pressure to support liquid water, there could still be pockets of ionic liquid. And where there is liquid, there may be potential for life, though likely not anything that resembles Earth’s water-based beings. 

“We consider water to be required for life because that is what’s needed for Earth life. But if we look at a more general definition, we see that what we need is a liquid in which metabolism for life can take place,” says Rachana Agrawal, who led the study as a postdoc in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences. “Now if we include ionic liquid as a possibility, this can dramatically increase the habitability zone for all rocky worlds.”

The study’s MIT co-authors are Sara Seager, the Class of 1941 Professor of Planetary Sciences in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences and a professor in the departments of Physics and of Aeronautics and Astronautics, along with Iaroslav Iakubivskyi, Weston Buchanan, Ana Glidden, and Jingcheng Huang. Co-authors also include Maxwell Seager of Worcester Polytechnic Institute, William Bains of Cardiff University, and Janusz Petkowski of Wroclaw University of Science and Technology, in Poland. 

A liquid leap

The team’s work with ionic liquid grew out of an effort to search for signs of life on Venus, where clouds of sulfuric acid envelope the planet in a noxious haze. Despite its toxicity, Venus’ clouds may contain signs of life — a notion that scientists plan to test with upcoming missions to the planet’s atmosphere.

Agrawal and Seager, who is leading the Morning Star Missions to Venus, were investigating ways to collect and evaporate sulfuric acid. If a mission collects samples from Venus’ clouds, sulfuric acid would have to be evaporated away in order to reveal any residual organic compounds that could then be analyzed for signs of life. 

The researchers were using their custom, low-pressure system designed to evaporate away excess sulfuric acid, to test evaporation of a solution of the acid and an organic compound, glycine. They found that in every case, while most of the liquid sulfuric acid evaporated, a stubborn layer of liquid always remained. They soon realized that sulfuric acid was chemically reacting with glycine, resulting in an exchange of hydrogen atoms from the acid to the organic compound. The result was a fluid mixture of salts, or ions, known as an ionic liquid, that persists as a liquid across a wide range of temperatures and pressures.

This accidental finding kickstarted an idea: Could ionic liquid form on planets that are too warm and host atmospheres too thin for water to exist? 

“From there, we took the leap of imagination of what this could mean,” Agrawal says. “Sulfuric acid is found on Earth from volcanoes, and organic compounds have been found on asteroids and other planetary bodies. So, this led us to wonder if ionic liquids could potentially form and exist naturally on exoplanets.”

Rocky oases

On Earth, ionic liquids are mainly synthesized for industrial purposes. They do not occur naturally, except for in one specific case, in which the liquid is generated from the mixing of venoms produced by two rival species of ants. 

The team set out to investigate what conditions ionic liquid could be naturally produced in, and over what range of temperatures and pressures. In the lab, they mixed sulfuric acid with various nitrogen-containing organic compounds. In previous work, Seager’s team had found that the compounds, some of which can be considered ingredients associated with life, are surprisingly stable in sulfuric acid.

“In high school, you learn that an acid wants to donate a proton,” Seager says. “And oddly enough, we knew from our past work with sulfuric acid (the main component of Venus’ clouds) and nitrogen-containing compounds, that a nitrogen wants to receive a hydrogen. It’s like one person’s trash is another person’s treasure.”

The reaction could produce a bit of ionic liquid if the sulfuric acid and nitrogen-containing organics were in a one-to-one ratio — a ratio that was not a focus of the prior work. For their new study, Seager and Agrawal mixed sulfuric acid with over 30 different nitrogen-containing organic compounds, across a range of temperatures and pressures, then observed whether ionic liquid formed when they evaporated away the sulfuric acid in various vials. They also mixed the ingredients onto basalt rocks, which are known to exist on the surface of many rocky planets. 

“We were just astonished that the ionic liquid forms under so many different conditions,” Seager says. “If you put the sulfuric acid and the organic on a rock, the excess sulfuric acid seeps into the rock pores, but you’re still left with a drop of ionic liquid on the rock. Whatever we tried, ionic liquid still formed.”

The team found that the reactions produced ionic liquid at temperatures up to 180 degrees Celsius and at extremely low pressures — much lower than that of the Earth’s atmosphere. Their results suggest that ionic liquid could naturally form on other planets where liquid water cannot exist, under the right conditions.

“We’re envisioning a planet warmer than Earth, that doesn’t have water, and at some point in its past or currently, it has to have had sulfuric acid, formed from volcanic outgassing,” Seager says. “This sulfuric acid has to flow over a little pocket of organics. And organic deposits are extremely common in the solar system.”

Then, she says, the resulting pockets of liquid could stay on the planet’s surface, potentially for years or millennia, where they could theoretically serve as small oases for simple forms of ionic-liquid-based life. Going forward, Seager’s team plans to investigate further, to see what biomolecules, and ingredients for life, might survive, and thrive, in ionic liquid. 

“We just opened up a Pandora’s box of new research,” Seager says. “It’s been a real journey.”

This research was supported, in part, by the Sloan Foundation and the Volkswagen Foundation.

###

Written by Jennifer Chu, MIT News

 

Ionic liquid forms only where glycine is present after sulfuric acid exposure and low-pressure heating. Left: glycine added; right: none. (a) Glycine powder applied. (b) Hot sulfuric acid added. (c) After 24 hours, liquid remains only on glycine side—acid fully evaporates on right. 

Credit

Rachana Agrawal

---

Journal

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

DOI

10.1073/pnas.2425520122 

Article Title

“Warm, Water-Depleted Rocky Exoplanets with Surface Ionic Liquids: A Proposed Class for Planetary Habitability”

Article Publication Date

11-Aug-2025

 

Chemists help solve mystery of missing space sulfur

New research could create road map to outer space element

University of Mississippi

Facebook

XLinkedInWeChatBlueskyMessageWhatsAppEmail

 

image: 

Clouds of cosmic dust and gas contain many of the building blocks needed for life, but sulfur is mysteriously rare. One of the most common forms of sulfur is S8, a ring of sulfur atoms that form a crown-like structure. A team of astrochemists, including an Ole Miss researcher, has discovered that  the crowns may help point scientists in the right direction.

view more 

Credit: Graphic by John McCustion/University Marketing and Communications

For decades, astrochemists have been looking for sulfur atoms in space and finding surprisingly little of the element that is a key ingredient to life. A new study could point to where it has been hiding.  

An international team of researchers including Ryan Fortenberry, an astrochemist at the University of Mississippi, and Ralf Kaiser, professor of chemistry at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa and Samer Gozem, computational chemist at Georgia State University, published their research in the journal Nature Communications. 

“Hydrogen sulfide is everywhere: it’s a product of coal-fired power plants, it has an effect on acid rain, it changes the pH levels of oceans and it comes out of volcanoes," Fortenberry said. "If we gain a better understanding of what the chemistry of sulfur can do, the technological commercialization that can come from that can only be realized with a foundation of fundamental knowledge.” 

Sulfur is the 10th most abundant element in the universe and is considered a vital chemical element for planets, stars and life. The lack of molecular sulfur in space has been a mystery for years.  

“The observed amount of sulfur in dense molecular clouds is less – compared to predicted gas-phase abundances– by three orders of magnitude,” Kaiser said. 

The answer might lie in interstellar ice.  

In cold regions of space, sulfur can form two distinct, stable configurations: octasulfur crowns, which are a group of eight sulfur atoms configured in ring-like crowns, and polysulfanes, chains of sulfur atoms that are bonded by hydrogen. These molecules can form on icy dust grains, locking sulfur into solid forms. 

“If you use, for instance, the James Webb Space Telescope, you get a specific signature at specific wavelengths for oxygen and carbon and nitrogen and so forth,” Fortenberry said. “But when you do that for sulfur, it’s out of whack, and we don't know why there isn’t enough molecular sulfur.  

“What this work is showing is that the most common forms of sulfur that we already know about are probably where the sulfur is hiding.”  

 

Kaiser and Fortenberry’s research showed that these sulfur-rich molecules may be abundant in icy regions of interstellar space, giving astronomers a potential road map to solving the sulfur puzzle.  

“Laboratory simulations of interstellar conditions such as this study discover possible inventories of sulfur–containing molecules that can be formed on interstellar ices," Kaiser said. “Astronomers can then utilize the results and look for these polysulfane molecules in the interstellar medium via radio telescopes once sublimed into the gas-phase in star forming regions.” 

The reason sulfur has been so difficult to find is that the bonds it forms are always changing, going from crowns to chains and a variety of other formulations. 

"It never maintains the same shape,” Fortenberry said. “It’s kind of like a virus – as it moves, it changes.” 

The researchers’ work identifies possible stable configurations that astronomers can search for in the universe. 

“The thing that I love about astrochemistry is that it forces you to ask hard questions, then forces you to come up with creative solutions,” Fortenberry said. “And those hard questions and creative solutions can have significant, unintended positive consequences." 

---

Journal

Nature Communications

Article Title

Missing interstellar sulfur in inventories of polysulfanes and molecular octasulfur crowns