tetano
Editor, Senior Moderator
The Holy Grail of flu vaccines -- a universal vaccine -- is drawing close, say researchers who today report discovery of an antibody effective against wide varieties of influenza viruses, including seasonal and potentially pandemic strains.
The antibody is similar to another, CR6261, which is about to begin human clinical trials by the biotech company Crucell, which collaborated on the study. The new antibody may be even more effective than CR6261, which showed great efficacy in mice.
In mice, injecting the CR6261 antibody prevented or cured an otherwise-lethal infection by about half of flu viruses. These include the infamous H1 viruses such as H1N1, the so-called swine flu, strains of which caused a deadly pandemic in 1918, and a much less severe but worrisome outbreak in 2009.
The study, "A Highly Conserved Neutralizing Epitope on Group 2 Influenza A Viruses," was published in the journal Science Express on July 7, 2011. Ian Wilson, a professor of structural biology at The Scripps Research Institute, was senior co-author of the paper, along with Jaap Goudsmit, chief scientific officer of Crucell.
More from the Scripps press release:
"Wilson's laboratory has been working with Crucell scientists since 2008 to help them overcome the major shortcoming of current influenza vaccines: They work only against the narrow set of flu strains that the vaccine makers predict will dominate in a given year, so their effectiveness is temporary. In addition, current influenza vaccines provide little or no protection against unforeseen strains.
"These shortcomings reflect a basic flu-virus defense mechanism. The viruses come packaged in spherical or filamentous envelopes that are studded with mushroom-shaped hemagglutinin (HA) proteins, whose more accessible outer structures effectively serve as decoys for a normal antibody response. "The outer loops on the HA head seem to draw most of the antibodies, but in a given strain these loops can mutate to evade an antibody response within months," said Wilson. Antiviral drugs aimed at these and other viral targets also lose effectiveness as flu virus populations evolve.
"The major goal of this research has been to find and attack relatively unvarying and functionally important structures on flu viruses," said Damian Ekiert, a graduate student in the Scripps Research Kellogg School of Science and Technology who is working in the Wilson laboratory. Ekiert and Crucell's Vice President for Antibody Discovery Robert H. E. Friesen are co-first authors of the Science Express report.
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Read more: http://www.nctimes.com/blogsnew/bus...8c5-11e0-8048-001cc4c002e0.html#ixzz1RRgjPWAy
The antibody is similar to another, CR6261, which is about to begin human clinical trials by the biotech company Crucell, which collaborated on the study. The new antibody may be even more effective than CR6261, which showed great efficacy in mice.
In mice, injecting the CR6261 antibody prevented or cured an otherwise-lethal infection by about half of flu viruses. These include the infamous H1 viruses such as H1N1, the so-called swine flu, strains of which caused a deadly pandemic in 1918, and a much less severe but worrisome outbreak in 2009.
The study, "A Highly Conserved Neutralizing Epitope on Group 2 Influenza A Viruses," was published in the journal Science Express on July 7, 2011. Ian Wilson, a professor of structural biology at The Scripps Research Institute, was senior co-author of the paper, along with Jaap Goudsmit, chief scientific officer of Crucell.
More from the Scripps press release:
"Wilson's laboratory has been working with Crucell scientists since 2008 to help them overcome the major shortcoming of current influenza vaccines: They work only against the narrow set of flu strains that the vaccine makers predict will dominate in a given year, so their effectiveness is temporary. In addition, current influenza vaccines provide little or no protection against unforeseen strains.
"These shortcomings reflect a basic flu-virus defense mechanism. The viruses come packaged in spherical or filamentous envelopes that are studded with mushroom-shaped hemagglutinin (HA) proteins, whose more accessible outer structures effectively serve as decoys for a normal antibody response. "The outer loops on the HA head seem to draw most of the antibodies, but in a given strain these loops can mutate to evade an antibody response within months," said Wilson. Antiviral drugs aimed at these and other viral targets also lose effectiveness as flu virus populations evolve.
"The major goal of this research has been to find and attack relatively unvarying and functionally important structures on flu viruses," said Damian Ekiert, a graduate student in the Scripps Research Kellogg School of Science and Technology who is working in the Wilson laboratory. Ekiert and Crucell's Vice President for Antibody Discovery Robert H. E. Friesen are co-first authors of the Science Express report.
...
Read more: http://www.nctimes.com/blogsnew/bus...8c5-11e0-8048-001cc4c002e0.html#ixzz1RRgjPWAy