Right now, creating an influenza vaccine is a guessing game. But scientists may be on the verge of developing a flu shot that protects people against multiple strains.
This new vaccine, if its effectiveness can be mimicked in people like it has been in mice, could provide immunity for current strains and ones that haven’t even been identified yet and for several years, said Ted Ross, director of the Center for Vaccines and Immunology at the University of Georgia.
This has the potential to be a universal flu vaccine, however much work remains to be done until that’s a reality
Every year, researchers have to gaze into their crystal balls to predict which strains of influenza will turn up during the flu season, and then create and manufacture a vaccine designed to fight them, United Press International reported.
Trouble is, most of the time these predictions are off. Multiple strains scientists didn’t see coming emerge quite often, the vaccine is worthless against them, and people end up getting sick anyway.
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“One of the problems with current influenza vaccines is that we have to make predictions about which virus strains will be most prevalent every year and build our vaccines around those predictions,” Ross said.
A notable, and frightening, example is the H1N1 virus pandemic in 2009. It was unexpected and threatening when it showed up, but now it’s just one of multiple strains that hit every season.
A universal flu vaccine would cover those multiple mystery strains before science even knows they exist, no crystal ball needed.
The new vaccine for multiple strains was created using Computationally Optimized Broadly Reactive Antigen, or COBRA, to create compound vaccines that were based on multiple strains’ genetic sequences.
The experimental COBRA vaccines were designed to find H1N1 strains discovered in the past 30 years and those from the last century. They produced nine candidate vaccines, and gave them to mice either via cocktail or prime-boost combos. The ones containing three specific vaccines had the greatest effect.
In other words, they ended up providing immunity against strains that weren’t included when scientists created the vaccines. That result told researchers that it was effective not just against the virus they intended it for, but those they hadn’t.
Body's immune response to influenza leads Melbourne scientists towards lifelong #flu #vaccine https://t.co/tiGdLg9qef
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Essentially, the experimental vaccine was built from the genetic sequences of multiple flu viruses, strengthening and extending its efficacy.
“What we have developed is a vaccine that protects against multiple different strains of H1N1 virus at once,” Ross said. “So we might be able to one day replace the current standard of care with this more broadly cross-protective vaccine.”
The response of the mice was based on the effectiveness of vaccines that have already been approved, and they left scant replication of the virus in their bodies. The process to design and use it can be a model for a new vaccine that is far better at protecting people against the flu than anything we have in our arsenal right now.
Multi-year protection against multiple strains of the flu will not only save lives, but money.
With the current guesswork strategy used right now to immunize people against influenza, a new vaccine must be developed every year. Production stops, researchers go back to the drawing board, make their predictions, and then start production starts again.
A new universal vaccine could be manufactured continuously for several years and therefore have a much cheaper price tag. That also means more people would be protected.
So far, it’s only been tested in a lab, with mice. But its success means a new universal shot against the flu may be possible in the future.
[Photo By CNK02 / Shutterstock
New Flu Vaccine Could Protect Us From Multiple Strains — Even Ones We Don’t Know About Yet is an article from: The Inquisitr News
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