Is a Universal Flu Vaccine On the Horizon?

sciencehabit writes: Two groups of researchers have created vaccines that may lead to a universal flu shot that could protect against every type of flu. Every year millions get a flu shot but with thousands of strains that mutate and evolve across seasons, no one shot can protect against them all. Sciencemag reports on the research: "When the teams vaccinated mice, both groups saw full protection against H5N1, a lethal influenza strain distantly related to H1N1. In both studies, mice that did not receive the stem-derived vaccine died, but vaccinated mice all survived. In further experiments, the nanoparticle-anchoring vaccine showed partial protection in ferrets, whereas the other vaccine showed partial protection in monkeys. Two of the six vaccinated ferrets fell ill and died, compared with a 100% mortality rate for the unvaccinated ferrets. None of the monkeys died, but those that were vaccinated had significantly lower fevers than their nonvaccinated companions."

Comments

I've been waiting for this for several years.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

I've been waiting for this for several years - after reading of similar (perhaps the same) work in Europe.

As with this story, they went after a "conserved region" on one of the critical viral proteins. This is a region that doesn't change substantially as the virus evolves, because it's the way it has to be for the virus to work, so viruses with changes to this part generally don't reproduce . (The bulk of the antibody-accessible portion of the virus is structural or "deliberate" camouflage, and mutates rapidly, which is why the viruses and ordinary vaccines keep changing.)

They cloned the conserved region onto a plasmid and made a strain of bacteria that pumped out the artificial antigen by the bucketful, suitable for making vaccine on industrial scale.

Story was they got one that worked for ALL the "A" strains of influenza. But they were having a hard time doing the same for "B" strains and didn't want to go for approval and production until they had a mix that could get them both.

Perhaps this story explains the problem with the B strains - and announces the solution?

Re:Autism claims appear to have been lawsuit fraud

[Jason Levine]

Not only that, but the researcher (Wakefield) was trying to market his own replacement to the MMR. He didn't want to eliminate vaccines, he just wanted his own to be used so he would get the money and not someone else. The irony being that the anti-vaccine groups hail him as a saint when he was trying to market a vaccine of his own.