The COVID-19 pandemic has brought public awareness to vaccines and how vaccines work. A vaccine is any agent that causes the immune system to remember a specific disease-causing entity, thereby preventing future infections. In the case of COVID-19, that's a coronavirus.

At Mayo Clinic, decades of research have led to development of a new vaccine platform — a single-cycle adenovirus nasal vaccine — that is now being tested in a phase 1 clinical trial for COVID-19.

“Single-cycle is particularly potent as a nasal vaccine, fighting SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) at its site of entry,” says Dr. Michael Barry, director of Mayo Clinic’s Vector and Vaccine Engineering Laboratory.

On the Mayo Clinic Q&A podcast, Dr. Barry discusses the research behind vaccine development and the possibility of future applications for the new vaccine platform.