MuziApril 17, 2018
Tag: universal flu vaccine , Vaccine , flu
We have to admit that the current flu vaccines are not satisfying! According to the world authoritative journal NEJM, less than half of people could not receive effective protection after flu vaccination. But according to many experts, currently, the flu vaccines fail to reach the expected effect, however, we have no better way than flu vaccines to prevent flu. Therefore, researchers have been looking for flu vaccines with better effect.
In terms of the flu itself, the characteristic of constant mutation of flu viruses brings great difficulties to flu vaccine R&D. Researchers must conduct corresponding vaccine development according to the possible flu virus types of every year and every flu season, however, the various flu virus types and high virus mutation rate cause great challenges to the prejudgment, and "plans not keeping up with changes" frequently happens. As a result, researchers are conceiving whether they could find a universal vaccine effective against all or many flu viruses, to solve the problem once and for all.
There has been no universal vaccine marketed in recent years, however, there has been great progress in R&D. Projects that are in smooth R&D mainly include the followings:
1. Universal Flu Vaccine under Vaccitech
Vaccitech is a British startup founded by scientists of University of Oxford, with the Universal Flu Vaccine under it having received USD 25 million finance from Alphabet, the parent company of Google, this year. It’s reported that the Universal Flu Vaccine developed by the company is unlike the traditional vaccines that directly stimulate the antibodies, but brings the killer T cells to kill viruses. This Universal Flu Vaccine has been successfully completed Phase I clinical study and is expected to be marketed in 2023 at the soonest.
2. GSK’s Universal Flu Vaccine
Hemagglutinin (HA) and ceramide have very high antigenicity, therefore are often regarded as targets of flu vaccine research. When studying HA, researchers found that HA is divided into head and stem, and the part that generally mutates is the head, while stem remains the same year-round, therefore, researchers changed the pervious thinking of developing vaccine for the head but specially for the stem. The Universal Flu Vaccine developed by GSK and Gates Foundation in association with Palese’s team at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai has entered the clinical study phase.
3. Universal vaccine RedeeFlu under GluGen
Unlike other flu vaccines, RedeeFlu is a kind of vaccine obtained by gene modification. According to a researcher of GluGen, the RedeeFlu obtained by gene modification of flu virus keeps the infection ability against cells but losses the transmission ability, therefore, vaccinated patients could produce antigen under sufficiently "real" immune response conditions and be ensured the safety. It’s worth mentioning that GluGen ever received the financial support of the U.S. Department of Defense, showing the strategic significance of flu to a country. The first flu vaccine born in 1940 was developed by the American military.
Throughout the flu vaccine development history, it has been nearly 80 years since 1940 when the American military successfully developed the flu vaccine, with many difficulties all the way. Flu vaccine was first marketed in 1945, however, the marketed vaccine could only be put out of use due to flu virus mutation in the subsequent 1946-1947; in 1958, researchers started to use the method of breaking virus to obtain "split vaccine"; in 1976, researchers also successfully developed the subunit vaccine with less adverse reactions; and now, adjuvanted vaccine (MF59) is widely used. Development of flu vaccines has been step by step, and although ideal flu prevention effect has not been achieved at present, it has been in the ideal direction. Now the R&D of universal flu vaccines has entered the crucial stage, and many projects with high potential are orderly in progress. Now it can be called the darkness before the down. As can be expected, the successful development of universal flu vaccine would make flu prevention much easier. Let’s look forward to it.
Contact Us
Tel: (+86) 400 610 1188
WhatsApp/Telegram/Wechat: +86 13621645194
Follow Us: