Universal Flu Vaccine May Soon Destroy Influenza

Over the past century, the influenza virus has wreaked havoc in the human population all around the world, while at the same time leaving experts unable to devise a comprehensive cure to kill it off. Because of its unique structure, the viral agent can easily mutate, and does so from one season to the next, making the previous year's vaccine unable to stop it. This mutagen potential is what has made all efforts to stop it fail miserably thus far. Sure, each year's strain can be treated by itself, but no fix-it-all vaccine exists yet to counteract all possible mutations of the virus.

Now, experts at the Saint Louis University say that they may have brought the goal of creating such a vaccine one step closer to reality. Devising such a medical tool would undoubtedly be one of the most important breakthroughs in the field of medicine since the invention of antibiotics. “This is a significant first step in developing a universal vaccine to help protect against pandemic influenza,” the Director of the Saint Louis University Center for Vaccine Development, Robert Belshe, MD, who is also the lead researcher of the new study, explains. Over the course of his career, the expert has studied a vaccine made by using proteins from strains of influenza viruses A and B.

“Novel vaccines, capable of inducing long-lasting, broad immunity against divergent strains, including potential pandemic viruses, are highly desirable,” Belshe says. He presented the results of his team's latest study at the National Foundation for Infectious Disease Conference for Vaccine Research, which took place in Baltimore, on April 27th. He argues that adding a generic anti-influenza component to seasonal vaccines, which pharmaceutical companies create each year according to predictions of which strain will be most widespread, could potentially limit and eventually prevent altogether the emergence of new mutagen strains of the influenza virus.

In their studies, the researchers injected approximately 377 healthy adults with the Bivalent Influenza Peptide Conjugate Vaccine (BIPCV), a universal influenza vaccine, three times over the course of six months. They learned that this amount of the cure was safe for the immune system, and actually triggered a heightened response against various types of pathogens. The research could hold the key to stopping the spread of lethal strains of the virus, such as H5N1 (avian flu) and H1N1 (swine flu), which pass silently from human to human, and oftentimes result in the death of the carrier.