Universal flu vaccine comes closer to reality

Source: DNA India

Scientists have developed a vaccine that protects against multiple strains of both seasonal and pandemic H1N1 influenza in mouse models, an advance that may lead to a universal flu vaccine.

"One of the problems with current influenza vaccines is that we have to make predictions about which virus strains will be most prevalent every year and build our vaccines around those predictions," said Ted Ross, from University of Georgia in US.

"What we have developed is a vaccine that protects against multiple different strains of H1N1 virus at once, so we might be able to one day replace the current standard of care with this more broadly cross-protective vaccine," Ross said.

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Using a technique called Computationally Optimised Broadly Reactive Antigen (COBRA), researchers created nine prototype synthetic compound vaccines constructed using genetic sequences from multiple influenza virus strains.

Read more: http://www.dnaindia.com/health/report-universal-flu-vaccine-comes-closer-to-reality-2195875