Can we vaccinate against the viruses hiding in our cells?

Suitable for 14-19-year olds (secondary and high schools, and college), this article and accompanying activity sheet can be used in the classroom, STEM clubs and at home.

This resource links to KS4 and KS5 Biology.

It can also be used as a careers resource and links to Gatsby Benchmarks:
Gatsby Benchmark 2: Learning from career and labour market information
Gatsby Benchmark 4: Linking curriculum learning to careers

• This teaching resource explains the work of Dr Matthew Reeves, a molecular virologist at University College London. He is developing a vaccine against human cytomegalovirus (HCMV), a herpes virus that infects over 70% of the world’s population.

• This resource also contains an interview with Matt. If your students have questions for Matt, they can send them to him online. All they need to do is to go to the article online (see the Futurum link below), scroll down to the end and type in the question(s). Matt will reply!

• The activity sheet provides ‘talking points’ (based on Bloom’s Taxonomy) to prompt students to reflect on Matt’s research and challenges them to explain the benefits of an HCMV vaccine to organ transplant patients and pregnant women.

This resource was first published on Futurum Careers, a free online resource and magazine aimed at encouraging 14-19-year-olds worldwide to pursue careers in science, tech, engineering, maths, medicine (STEM) and social sciences, humanities and the arts for people and the economy (SHAPE).

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