Until 2020, the average development time for a new vaccine has been around 10 years with the previous all time record being 4 years. On the other hand, the first two vaccines for Covid-19 took less than a year. Developing a new vaccine is traditionally a long and very time-consuming process. However, the pandemic has pushed unforeseen scientific efforts in the development of new technological approaches for vaccine research, with groundbreaking results.

With Dr Liu, a major global expert in the field and known to the scientific community as "the mother of DNA vaccines", we will discuss the new technological weapons for today’s and tomorrow’s vaccines, and why they have such great potential.

Who is Dr. Margaret A. Liu?

Dr. Margaret A. Liu is a world-renowned expert in the fields of vaccines, immunotherapy, gene therapy, and global health. Dr. Liu obtained an M.D. from Harvard Medical School and completed her clinical and research training at Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School and MIT. She has pioneered two important new technologies for vaccines and for treating cancer (DNA vaccines and bifunctional antibodies) for which she has received numerous awards internationally and two honorary doctorates including an MD honoris causa, given by the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, where she had been previously invited to lecture by the Nobel committee. She is known as “The Mother of DNA Vaccines” and is the scientific lead for the WHO drafting group writing guidelines for mRNA vaccines.

Dr. Liu is CEO of PAX Therapeutics, which is developing gene-based therapy of tendon and ligament repair. As Principal of ProTherImmune, she consults for companies, investment firms, universities, and scientific non-governmental and governmental organizations, is a Foreign Adjunct Professor at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, and an Adjunct Full Professor at UCSF, and is the Chairman of the Board and President Emeritus of the International Society for Vaccines. She was the Senior Advisor in Vaccinology at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and Executive Vice-Chair of the International Vaccine Institute (IVI), an independent international organization established by the UN with signatory countries, in Seoul, Korea. She has held various executive and board positions at pharma and biotech companies (Merck, Chiron, Sangamo, Transgene) and is currently a Director at Ipsen and Adjuvance Technologies.