Winter is Coming, and So May Be a One-Shot Universal Flu Vaccine

An international group of researchers, comprising scientists from the Universities of Lancaster, Aston, and Complutense in Madrid have reportedly developed vaccines that have a wider range of application than previous inoculations.

According to a paper published in Bioinformatics, one vaccine, designed specifically for the United States, is effective in fighting 95 percent of flu viruses common in the country. Another vaccine for the non-US market is said to be able to wipe out 88 percent of flu strains known to medicine.

Ordinarily, a vaccine is crafted using the most recent flu strain, staying effective until the emergence of a new strain.

“We know this method is safe, and that it works reasonably well most of the time,” Dr. Derek Gatherer of Lancaster University, one of the participants of the research, said. “However, sometimes it doesn’t work – as in the H3N2 vaccine failure in winter 2014-2015 – and even when it does it is immensely expensive and labor-intensive.”

Thus, the annual treatment gives “no protection at all against [a] potential future pandemic flu,” Gatherer added.

The new vaccines are composed of epitopes, or “short flu virus fragments that are already known to be recognized by the immune system,” Dr. Pedro Reche of Complutense University, explained.

“Our collaboration has found a way to select epitopes reaching full population coverage,” Reche said, adding that a “universal flu vaccine is potentially within reach.”

The team is currently preapring for synthesizing vaccines for laboratory testing.

Separately, an international team of researchers from the McMaster University's Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine, in Canada; the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, and the University of Chicago have created a universal flu vaccine variant. The research is presented in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA (PNAS).

Researchers devised antibodies that can “train” an immune system to detect a part of a flu virus that does not change over time. The outcome of the experiment will help create a vaccine that only needs to be given once in a lifetime, as it will be capable of fighting off newly-emerging viruses, including mutations.

"Using this knowledge, what we can now do is specifically design our universal vaccine to generate the most desirable types of antibodies and avoid antibodies that block the functions that we want. So in doing that we can make sure that the vaccine will work in the most effective way possible."

Influenza is one of the most common diseases in the world. The World Health Organization estimates that three to five million people are infected annually, with a death rate estimated at between 250,000-500,000.