There are many ways to treat disease. Vaccines are proactive, providing immunity to disease. Vaccines act like a “weakened” form of the disease, causing the body to generate antibodies that prevent illness when the real thing comes along. Vaccination is one of the main reasons why some deadly pathogens have all but disappeared. Take polio, for instance: once widespread, the disease is now rare in the Western world, and the WHO is aiming for a polio-free planet by 2018. Conversely, the unfounded phobia of vaccination has led to recent outbreaks of measles in the United States, Canada, and Mexico, including the highly publicized outbreak at Disneyland, California.

Vaccines work, but they can also have drawbacks. They can be expensive to make, requiring a combination of highly trained scientists, specialized equipment, and loads of funding. Their production can be resource-intensive and wasteful, typically requiring chicken eggs to help incubate the disease pathogens. An egg per vaccine may not seem like much, but hundreds of millions of vaccines are given each year, requiring the production of millions of nutritious eggs. Moreover, producing a vaccine can be slow, much too slow when considering the fast spread of many diseases, such as Ebola. But, surprisingly, it is the viruses themselves that hold some of the answers for speeding up vaccine production.

Viruses are icky. When a friend says, “I got a virus,” most of us take a step back, and for good reason. If you saw in detail how viruses work, you’d be more than creeped out. Ever seen a picture of a standard bacteria-targeting virus, like a bacteriophage? When these nasty critters land on a poor, unsuspecting bacterium, they insert their own genetic information into the host. The viral genes hijack the bacterial cell, take control of the cellular machinery, and use it to create more copies of the virus. And when the cell is finally filled to the brim with viral clones, the cell ruptures, spilling out hundreds of identical viruses into the world. And you thought your roommate’s mooching was bad.

In other words, a virus functions by inserting its own genes into a host genome, and then host proteins turn those viral genes into viral proteins and ultimately more viruses. The in-house enzymes can’t differentiate between viral and host genes. Moreover, the genes of viruses, bacteria, and humans are all decoded using the same universal language. This means that viruses could be engineered to deliver “good” instead of “bad” genes. For instance, viruses could be used as vectors for making and delivering antibodies to combat disease, which is exactly what scientists have in mind.

On paper, viral delivery vaccination systems and other types of genetically engineered vaccines are an upgrade to traditional egg-based vaccines. They’re fast to make — weeks not months. They’re efficient, partly because much of the vaccine genetic sequence analysis and engineering can be performed on computers using bioinformatics. And they require no eggs to incubate, no technicians to keep watch. In fact, the process is catered to automation and mass-production. Consider this: the annual flu vaccine begins production in February, well before the sniffles and coughs arrive. Specialists then get together to predict the three most common variants of the flu for next year. It’s really a whole lot of guesswork and, as such, their predictions can be hit or miss. But imagine if you could deliver an effective flu vaccine a mere week after the season begins! The effectiveness of flu vaccines would skyrocket.

Of course, there are downsides. Most importantly, control: how do we make sure that the “hijacked” cells don’t just keep pumping out antibodies? Science is still working on a functional off-switch for these other kinds of recombinant vaccines, but they’ve got an idea. Specialized vaccines provide immunity for a certain period of time before a booster shot must be reapplied. No booster, no immunity, no problem.

How far off are these vaccines? They’re already here. The Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC) began research in 2013, and currently theirs is a seasonal flu vaccine that takes advantage of these kinds of methods. Vaccine approval processes take a long time, and the FDA is a mess of bureaucracy and red tape. But with the emergence of Ebola, the CDC may finally have the public support necessary to push through these developments. Many have hailed so called “viral vaccines” as the next big step in disease prevention. If anything, it shows that science is always ready to learn and find inspiration from nature.

Dennis He is an undergraduate science student at the University of Western Ontario. Stick him in a room with strangers and he’ll likely know the most about ancient Roman history, the best napping locations on campus, and how to make delicious chicken potpie. In his free time, he enjoys riding bikes downhill really, really fast. This essay resulted from a science writing internship with Prof. David Smith, Western University (www.arrogantgenome.com).

It is estimated that over one billion people suffer from neurological illness. But despite increased awareness and decreased social stigma around neurological disease and mental illness, effective treatment options are often lacking. They can involve anything from basic lifestyle changes to going under the knife to electric shock therapy. But by far the most popular treatment is to medicate, medicate, medicate.

Each year, pharmaceutical companies spend billions of dollars on drug development for neurological disorders. The time and energy required to go from an initial “drug blueprint” to worldwide distribution can be immense. One of the most time-consuming steps in the process is testing and understanding the effects of a drug. Many other disciplines use model systems to test cause-and-effect relationships, so why don’t neurologists just pump drug prototypes into a mockup of the human brain? The answer: one doesn’t exist. Yet.

The “lab rat” of the human brain project — literally

In 2005, the Swiss Brain and Mind Institute (SBMI) began creating a complete model of the mammalian brain using lab rats. Dubbed the Blue Brain Project, they’ve made impressive headway: in 2006 they produced a man-made cortical column of 10,000 neurons—a brainy start, to say the least!

Although a rat brain is no substitute for a human brain, it has taught us a bunch about how mammalian brains work and how to get brain projects up and rolling. Unfortunately, scientists can’t run drug simulations on the rat brain model. This may seem surprising given that the rat and human genomes are very similar, but small genetic changes can have major impacts in drug response.

The Real Deal: The Human Brain Project

More recently, scientists have tried to model our own noggins. In the beginning of 2014, over 300 researchers assembled in Lausanne, Switzerland, and put their heads together and came up with a plan to map the entire human brain. This model is entirely computer-based, made up of a network of computers and servers that will be accessible online by researchers from around the world. Using everything from traditional MRI imaging and cadaver autopsies to more advanced computing and predictive modeling, the team hopes to have a complete working model of the human brain within two decades. Keep in mind that the Human Genome Project was forecasted to take half a century, but was completed in less than twenty-five years.

The project has, however, been running low on energy—it takes about 20 gigawatts of power to run the necessary equipment (about ten times the amount of energy needed to power New York City). To deal with these energy demands, the team is collaborating with IBM and Intel to create the first exascale computing machines, which should be ready by 2020—the estimated start-date of digital analysis. Additionally, cutting edge storage technologies are being examined, such as saving project data in the form of DNA—using the As, Ts, Gs, and Cs in the place of the binary “0s and 1s”. This effectively increases the “alphabet” of data, resulting in more stable and compact storage options. If anything, the Human Brain Project is stirring up interest in these emerging technologies.

What does this mean for us?

It’s still not known whether a human brain model will be accurate or sophisticated enough for drug testing. But there’s little doubt that the model will help in the primary treatment of neurological and psychological illnesses and speed up and reduce the cost of drug discovery. The model will allow researchers to find “biological signatures” — little quirks about neuron firing patterns — which will provide clues to the causes of many diseases. From there it’s only a matter of creating a drug that helps revert damaged areas, boost healthy brain activity, or a mix of the two.

What’s more, the creation of a simulated human brain could be transcribed and used as the foundation for the next generation of artificial intelligence. These so-called neuromorphic systems, although purely theoretical at present, are thought to be more efficient and intuitive than traditional artificial intelligence. Terminator-style self-awareness aside, the potential of using this technology for robots or back-end chips is enormous.

The Human Brain Project isn’t limited to medicine and science. Its completion could also result in an expansion of knowledge in the field of ethics. It might provide unprecedented insights into emotion, thought, personality, and memory. In fact, completion of the project could challenge our personal perceptions of freewill and identity.

Of course, there is strong possibility that this whole project will fail, becoming one big brain fart. The team could easily run into difficulties with funding or processing power, but that’s always a risk when doing “Big Science”. However, if the Human Brain Project does pull through, the findings will likely give us all something to think about.