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'Universal' flu vaccine effective in animals
Self-assembling nanoparticles could make updating seasonal vaccines easier.
Ed Yong
22 May 2013
Under the microscope, they look like simple jacks, with eight spikes jutting out of a central ball. But these protein nanoparticles are science's latest weapon against influenza: a new breed of flu vaccine that provides better and broader protection than commercially available ones — at least in animal tests.
Current flu vaccines use inactivated whole viruses and must be regularly remade to target the strains most likely to cause illness in the coming year. But the new nanoparticles would require fewer updates because they induce the production of antibodies that neutralize a wider range of flu strains. They could even protect against varieties of flu that have not yet emerged.
“This is taking us on the road to a universal vaccine,” says Gary Nabel, now at the biotechnology firm Sanofi in Cambridge, Massachussetts, who led the work in his former lab at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethesda, Maryland. The results are published on Nature's website today1.
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Self-assembling nanoparticles could make updating seasonal vaccines easier.
Ed Yong
22 May 2013
Under the microscope, they look like simple jacks, with eight spikes jutting out of a central ball. But these protein nanoparticles are science's latest weapon against influenza: a new breed of flu vaccine that provides better and broader protection than commercially available ones — at least in animal tests.
Current flu vaccines use inactivated whole viruses and must be regularly remade to target the strains most likely to cause illness in the coming year. But the new nanoparticles would require fewer updates because they induce the production of antibodies that neutralize a wider range of flu strains. They could even protect against varieties of flu that have not yet emerged.
“This is taking us on the road to a universal vaccine,” says Gary Nabel, now at the biotechnology firm Sanofi in Cambridge, Massachussetts, who led the work in his former lab at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethesda, Maryland. The results are published on Nature's website today1.
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