Scientists Get One Step Closer to a Universal Flu Vaccine

[tetano]

Last year’s seasonal flu vaccine was a bit of a dud: It reduced a person’s risk of needing to see a doctor for the flu by only 23 percent. That wasn’t anyone’s fault really. Vaccines take months to make, and flu viruses are constantly mutating, so making the shots takes some guesswork. But what if doctors had a universal flu vaccine—one that worked for multiple years across multiple strains? Two new studies take them a small closer to that goal. Today, independent teams reported in Science and Nature Medicine how they’ve tinkered with a piece of viral protein so it can teach immune systems—in this case, in mice, ferrets, and monkeys—to fight whole groups of viruses rather than just a single strain. “It’s a great first step in the road for generating a universal flu vaccine,” says Gary Nabel, who oversaw one of the studies as former head of the National Institutes of Health’s Vaccine Research Center. (Disclosure: My father works at the vaccine maker Sanofi, which has since hired both Nabel and an author on the other study. Sanofi had no role in funding these studies.)


http://www.wired.com/2015/08/scienti...l-flu-vaccine/

[tetano]

The first original article
The second original article

[Gert van der Hoek]

Proof of concept of a flu vaccine offering protection against many influenza subtypes, even neutralizing H5N1 viruses .



New Study by TSRI and Janssen Makes Major Advance Toward More Effective, Long-Lasting Flu Vaccine

Collaboration Shows Vaccine Candidate Can Produce Powerful ‘Broadly Neutralizing Antibodies’ in Animal Models

LA JOLLA, CA – August 24, 2015 – Scientists from The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) and the Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson (Janssen) have found a way to induce antibodies to fight a wide range of influenza subtypes—work that could one day eliminate the need for repeated seasonal flu shots.

“This study shows that we’re moving in the right direction for a universal flu vaccine,” said Ian Wilson, Hansen Professor of Structural Biology and chair of the Department of Integrative Structural and Computational Biology at TSRI.

The study was part of TSRI’s long-term collaboration to strengthen research against infectious disease with the former Crucell Vaccine Institute, now known as Janssen Prevention Center and headquartered in Leiden, the Netherlands.

The research was published online ahead of print on August 24 by the journal Science.

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