Today we are happy to present one of the best news stories we’ve ever covered in our long years on this blog. It’s the announcement of a new type of vaccine from Stanford University. But it’s so mind bogglingly different from all the others we’ve come across that we genuinely wonder if it should be called vaccine at all! The details may be found in this crisp article from the excellent James Gallagher of the BBC [1] Essentially, it’s a nasal spray, so far tested only in mice, that offers protection against several viruses including colds, flu and COVID 19. Also against bacteria such as Staphylococcus aureus and Acinetobacter baumannii, two long known antibiotic resistant inhabitants of these pages.
Now, traditional vaccines have worked the same way ever since the pioneering work of Jenner. One organism=one vaccine, with the immune system trained to recognise one small target area of the invading organism. It’s as precise as a sniper; but can only ever protect you against one disease. The brilliant team at Stanford have taken an utterly new approach and decided to tackle the pathway by which a whole bunch or organisms make their attack. In this case the lungs. So it doesn’t matter if you are hit with a COVID 19 virus, the common cold, flu, the bacterial chums we noted above or even certain allergens. The macrophages of the lungs have been fired up and stand ready to repel any hostile borders-and will remain that way for several months[2]
Right, back to the question we started with: as this is so different from anything we were taught in school, can we really call it a vaccine? Well. If you define a vaccine as “ a molecular entity that trains the immune system to respond more effectively to a future biological threat” then yes, it is. But compared to the old ones it is a conceptual leap of awesome power. We doubt it will replace “old -skool” specific vaccines; their efficacy is just too good to waste. But as a completely new, game changing intellectual concept-well we think the sky’s the limit
[1] Single vaccine could protect against all coughs, colds and flus, researchers say – BBC News
[2] Science (2026)
“An intranasal vaccine activating innate immune danger pathways protects mice against diverse respiratory pathogens.”
Published: 19 February 2026
Lead author: Dr. Olivia Martinez, PhD
Stanford University School of Medicine
Department of Microbiology & Immunology
#health #vaccine #colds #flu #antibiotic resistance #virus #bacteria #immune system
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