Against all strains

A potential universal flu vaccine has passed an important stage of clinical trials

Polina Gershberg, Naked Science

A vaccine that could provide reliable immunization against several flu strains at once is a kind of holy Grail for doctors. Perhaps scientists are close to creating such a vaccine: a development called FLU-V has passed the first and second phases of clinical trials. An article about this is published in the Annals of Internal Medicine (Pleguezuelos et al., Immunogenicity, Safety, and Efficacy of a Standalone Universal Influenza Vaccine, FLU-v, in Healthy Adults: A Randomized Clinical Trial).

According to the creators of the vaccine, the test results were very encouraging. "We have conducted four clinical trials of FLU-v," says Olga Pleguezelos from the pharmaceutical company SEEK. "The key point is that the vaccine can give cellular and immune responses that manifest themselves within six months after immunization." Given how quickly viruses change, such a duration of "immune resistance" is simply grandiose.

Each flu season forces specialists to predict which strains will be the most common, and promptly develop vaccines against them. However, in the midst of an epidemic, the virus may mutate or a new strain will appear, which will make all the measures taken useless.

Previously, scientists tried to find a solution to this problem with the help of "superantibodies" that will somehow attach to various viral strains. However, this approach did not bring success. In the new work, the researchers focused on the influenza virus itself, trying to understand which parts of it remain unchanged regardless of the strain.

Thanks to the use of a computer algorithm, the team of scientists managed to identify conservative (not subject to changes) areas of viral proteins. FLU-v contains four different components against four different conservative sites of the influenza virus, and even if one of these sites is changed, the three components will still ensure the high effectiveness of the vaccine.

FLU-v activates T-lymphocytes, which determine the desired sequence of the viral protein, thereby triggering an antiviral response. "It took many years for the scientific community to realize the effectiveness of the T-cell approach," says Pleguezelos. – The 2009-2010 pandemic (meaning the outbreak of the H1N1 virus strain, commonly known as "swine flu". – Ed.) showed that people who were exposed to the virus, but did not get sick, had T-lymphocytes that respond to [specific] areas of the virus."

So far, FLU-v has successfully completed only the first phases of testing, which are limited to evaluating the safety of development. Now the creators of the vaccine are preparing for the third phase, during which the drug will undergo randomized controlled trials involving a large population of patients and will actually show what it is capable of in the "field".

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