In Jan 2020, very early in the Covid-19 pandemic, one of the first acts of the incoming US President Joe Biden was to formally write to his newly appointed chief science officer Dr Eric Lander (an eminent globally renowned genomic scientist) and pose several urgent challenges to address. The first challenge on that list, is the title and topic of this session. Without any doubt, the Covid-19 pandemic has been a disaster for humanity. To confront this calamity head on the global scientific community has mobilised in a way never before seen in human history. In the past two years, more scientific papers (and discoveries) have been published in this area than any previous single topic in human history. Stunning new scientific findings and breakthrough new technologies are now poised to usher in an entirely new era of modern medicine that reaches far beyond the Covid-19 challenge and will have profound impacts for all human diseases including cancer. Some emerging examples of these include entirely new nanotechnologies to monitor the human immune system, entirely novel miniaturised manufacturing systems for modern medicines, along with personalised cancer vaccines that are already in human clinical trials.

In this informal and highly interactive session, our panel (a virologist/immunologist, a nanotechnologist and a deputy chief health officer) will highlight some of the major scientific and technological advances that have occurred during the Covid-19 pandemic and discuss the ramifications and opportunities that these will have for Australia and modern society in the future.