universal flu +8 Dec 2020 08:14
Vaccine for all flu passes phase one trials
Tom Whipple
Tuesday December 08 2020, 12.01am, The Times
Health
Avoiding the crowds with a cheese and wine picnic on Box Hill near Dorking, Surrey, yesterday
Avoiding the crowds with a cheese and wine picnic on Box Hill near Dorking, Surrey, yesterday
ALEX LENTATI/LNP
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A “universal” flu vaccine has gone through the first stage of human trials, in a crucial step towards pandemic-proofing the planet.
The vaccine, designed to work against influenza even if the virus mutates, has passed phase one trials, showing it is safe and results in antibodies. In the 65 recipients, who were followed over 18 months, it created a “broad, strong, durable and functional immune response”, the scientists found.
If it can be proven to work at a larger scale then it could replace the annual flu jab, and protect against dangerous strains that have yet to appear.
Adolfo García-Sastre, of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, said it was the result of many years of work. “We have been trying to develop a flu vaccine that will not require annual vaccination, because it will provide immunity against any influenza strain,” he said. “It will also then protect against even the exotic viruses that come from time to time from birds or from swine and cause pandemics.”
Unlike coronavirus, flu mutates easily. This means a vaccine that stops infection one year will not do so the next. However, there are some parts of the virus that do not change.
One of these is its “stalk”, a conserved region below a bulbous and rapidly mutating head that sits on the outside of the virus shell. Although the body does not typically naturally develop antibodies against this part, the new vaccine is designed to encourage it to do so.
Professor García-Sastre’s research, published in the journal Nature Medicine, involved repeated doses of a vaccine in which the head kept changing, but the stalk was conserved. This meant that the antibodies to the stalk were boosted between doses, while those to the head were not.
The results were impressive, but it has been tested only on people aged 18-39, and the immune response has yet to be shown to prevent infection.
At present, the vaccine targets one of three types of flu stalk, but Professor García-Sastre anticipates that the same approach could be used to make a “trivalent” vaccine that covers them all, and would provide far longer-lasting immunity than the seasonal jab.
He said that should all go well it could be ready in just over a decade, but that “if we had an accelerated programme, like with Covid-19, this could be done in two years”. Although the present crisis is caused by a coronavirus, influenza viruses have historically been a major source of pandemics. “If this vaccine works but it takes us 12 years, and in those 12 years there’s a pandemic — it’s bad,” Professor García-Sastre added.
Daniel Davis, professor of immunology at Manchester Univ
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