Moving Beyond the Annual Flu Shot
By: XiaoZhi Lim
(Inside Science TV) -- The end of the calendar year signals the beginning of a new flu season, and the familiar routine of a yearly flu shot.
To develop the annual flu shot, scientists use proteins on the surfaces of that year’s strains of flu viruses. Traditional vaccines use live flu viruses taken from each year’s major strains to teach the immune system to make antibodies that would protect itself against the flu.
“The virus surface protein changes year by year, which is why we need to be immunized every year,” said Masaru Kanekiyo, a vaccine researcher at the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethesda, Md.
Now researchers have identified a part of the flu virus that remains the same year after year and sneaks away undetected by the immune system.
To teach the immune system to see this part of the flu virus, researchers created a vaccine that looks like a spiky ball. The spikes are made of a flu virus protein and expose the unchanging part of the virus to the immune system.
“In our experimental setting, we see ten times more antibody response compared to the traditional vaccine. Our vaccine can neutralize viruses from 1934 through 2007. This is not the vaccine for next year, or two, or three, but we hope that this is the template for the vaccine in the future,” Kanekiyo said.
The new flu vaccine will also make flu research safer, since vaccine makers will not have to work with the live flu viruses.
XiaoZhi Lim is a graduate student in science journalism at Boston University. Originally from Singapore, XiaoZhi has written for the Boston University News Service and produced episodes for the American Chemical Society’s online video series, Bytesize Science.
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