Dr. Chris Buck, a virologist at the US National Cancer Institute, is looking towards the future of immunizations, and is trading in the traditional needle for a pint glass, meaning, he’s begun experimenting with delivering vaccines via a cup of beer.
What does the future of vaccines and immunizations look like? No, we’re not talking about what vaccines will be invented, but instead, how they will be administered. One virologist who works for the US National Cancer Institute has gotten creative in his own time developing a new experiment in which we take our immunizations in the form of a glass of beer.
Dr. Chris Buck has focused his research on polyomaviruses, a family of viruses that infect up to 91% of people by the time they turn 9-years-old without causing symptoms. Polyomaviruses are also connected to various cancers and serious health problems for individuals with weakened immune systems.
Dr. Buck’s vaccine beer experiment first began when he and his colleagues were developing a traditional vaccine against polyomavirus, and creativity began flowing. It’s important to note that the vaccine beer experiment is not sanctioned by his employer, and the National Institutes of Health told him he couldn’t experiment on himself.
To be able to continue his work, he founded and became the sole employer of Gusteau Research Corporation, a nonprofit organization that he established so he could make and drink his vaccine as a private citizen. The name of the company is inspired by Chef Auguste Gusteau from the Disney Pixar film Ratatouille, whose motto was “anyone can cook.”
“The idea really is to just take living yeast, which are what makes beer, and put a vaccine inside the living yeast. And by doing that, you can actually get the yeast to cause an immune response,” Buck wrote in a blog post.
“It’s a radically simplified approach to making vaccines.”
“I’ve homebrewed beer off and on for 30 years. When I saw that feeding lab mice with engineered brewer’s yeast could induce protective antibody responses against the virus I study, my instant first thought was, ‘Well, I can definitely do that at home.’”
Buck engineered what’s known as brewer’s yeast to produce viral proteins from BK polyomavirus, which usually remains formant and harmless. He used that yeast to ferment beer, thus creating a drink that in theory could expose the immune system to viral antigens without causing infection.
Buck drank the beer himself, and reported that his body produced antibodies against the virus.
The overall goal of this experiment is to develop an oral vaccine that doesn’t require needles, refrigeration storage, or complex medical infrastructure, which could make immunization cheaper, easier, and more accessible in low resource areas.
While Buck did initially try to get approval to test the beer under formal research protocols, he was denied by ethics committees, leading him to pursue it independently.
He founded his nonprofit organization and his brother and other colleagues helped him by also consuming the beer with no adverse effects. Blood tests suggested that Buck did develop antibodies against multiple strains of BK polyomavirus. Buck shared his data publicly, which showed his antibody levels increased against BK polyomavirus subtype II and IV after drinking the beer. Subtype IV was the primary target of the experiment as well.
Buck wanted to release his methods and initial data publicly through online reports and blog posts to show a full commitment to transparency.
“This one vaccine is just proving the principle,” Buck tells the London Times.
“Next on the agenda is Covid and flu and probably herpesviruses and adenovirus [which typically causes cold or flu symptoms] … Anything that is a common-cold virus is in our crosshairs now.”
There are obvious concerns regarding Buck’s experiment when it comes to a true path towards actually utilizing his methods for immunization. For instance, traditional vaccines take years of testing and large-scale human trials to get a clear evaluation of safety and effectiveness.
Bioethicists also argue that self-experimentation and public transparency of unverified results can undermine the trust in the result of the experiment. Today’s world is so full of misinformation as well that it’s important to remain skeptical.
However, Buck is committed to his research and doesn’t have any intentions of slowing down. Certain oral vaccines also already exist to treat diseases like polio and cholera, so we do know that immune protection doesn’t always take the form of a shot.
Buck also stated that beer doesn’t have to be the only delivery vehicle for this treatment, it’s just what he started with considering he created a yeast-based approach. He stated the same work can be implemented into non-alcoholic beverages or foods as well.
He’s also still researching and pursuing other more conventional vaccine approaches for the future within his established research frameworks and facilities. While the world shouldn’t expect to start taking a simple dive bar order as their immunization anytime soon, Buck’s experiment does offer an exciting look into what the future of medicine could look like.
Eric Mastrota is a Contributing Editor at The National Digest based in New York. A graduate of SUNY New Paltz, he reports on world news, culture, and lifestyle. You can reach him at eric.mastrota@thenationaldigest.com.
