Stanford University, School of Medicine
The Robert G. Fenley Writing Awards: News Releases
Silver
In a study published Dec. 11, 2024, in Nature, Stanford bioengineering professor Michael Fischbach and colleagues showed that the immune system mounts a surprisingly strong immune response to Streptococcus epidermidis, a friendly skin-colonizing bacterial species.
When Fischbach and his colleagues gently applied S. epidermidis to mice’s skin, S. epidermidis-specific antibody levels in these mice — which ordinarily never harbor that species on their skin or fur — went ballistic.
“It was as if the mice had been vaccinated,” Fischbach told staff science writer Bruce Goldman, who wrote the news release for the study.
That led to a brilliant idea: Why not try taking advantage of this odd phenomenon? Fischbach’s team bioengineered mice, replacing the telltale protein on the bacterial surface that, they found, spurs the resulting immune response with another protein more relevant to human disease: tetanus toxin. When they tested this construct as a vaccine to the deadly virus that produces it, it worked! All the mice were protected from normally lethal doses of the microbial pathogen.
A topically delivered “plug-and-play” immunization scheme would revolutionize the entire vaccine industry. Goldman’s goal was, simply, to tell the world this might be in the cards.
What was the most impactful part of your entry?
The release generated substantial media coverage by print, broadcasting, and web-based outlets including BBC radio (two separate treatments), BBC Science Focus, The Times of London, VICE, New Atlas, Fierce Biotech, The Debrief, The University Network, Vax-before-Travel. (It was also picked up internally by the Stanford University’s news site, Stanford Report). Many of these outlets also linked directly to Goldman’s release; even more of them borrowed language from it. In one case, a web site entirely devoted to poultry (wattagnet.com) wrote a glowing review of the story (probably because Fischbach’s study suggests a possible way of noninvasively vaccinating chickens against bird flu).
The release also was covered by the Iranian government-affiliated news site Tasnim, Dutch public broadcasting organization NOS, and Spanish newspaper 65ymas.com.
Fischbach (the study’s senior author) emailed Goldman in mid-February 2025 that that he’d received “a great deal of feedback – unlike anything I’ve done before,” in response to the published study and the publicity that promoted it.
As of Sep. 29, 2025, this release has received more than 13,646 page views since it posted on our online news site on Dec. 11, 2024, according to Google analytics, and it continues to accrue online readership.
What is one thing you learned from your entry/experience?
Because Fischbach’s study was published by Nature under “accelerated advance publication” rules, we couldn’t distribute Goldman’s news release until two days before the embargo lifted. Still, the sheer excitement inherent in announcing the possibility of topical “do it at home” vaccination technique overcame the short lead time, and the news release generated significant coverage by high-level news outlets as well as impressive direct online page views.
Contact: Alison Peterson
alison.peterson@stanford.edu