Published 8 July 2011
Annually changing flu vaccines with their hit-and-miss effectiveness may soon give way to a single, near-universal flu vaccine, according to a new report from scientists at the Scripps Research Institute and the Dutch biopharmaceutical company Crucell; they describe an antibody which, in animal tests, can prevent or cure infections with a broad variety of influenza viruses, including seasonal and potentially pandemic strains
A universal flu vaccine in the offing // Source: yle.fi
Annually changing flu vaccines with their hit-and-miss effectiveness may soon give way to a single, near-universal flu vaccine, according to a new report from scientists at theScripps Research Instituteand the Dutch biopharmaceutical company Crucell. They describe an antibody which, in animal tests, can prevent or cure infections with a broad variety of influenza viruses, including seasonal and potentially pandemic strains. The finding, published in the journalScience Express on 7 July 2011, shows the influenza subtypes neutralized with the new antibody include H3N2, strains of which killed an estimated one million people in Asia in the late 1960s.
“Together this antibody and the one we reported in 2009 have the potential to protect people against most influenza viruses,” said Ian Wilson, who is the Hansen Professor of Structural Biology and a member of the Skaggs Institute for Chemical Biology at Scripps Research, as well as senior author of the new paper with Crucell’s chief scientific officer Jaap Goudsmit. Read more
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