Long - playing and polyvalent
One vaccination will protect you from many types of flu for a long time
The flu is a heavy burden of humanity. The World Health Organization reports that up to 650 thousand people die from this respiratory tract infection every year.
Vaccination helps to reduce the incidence and the number of severe cases of the disease. However, vaccinations have to be done annually. The fact is that the virus is constantly mutating, which allows it to return in a new more contagious or more lethal form.
According to many experts, new flu epidemics that will cover entire countries (they are called pandemics) are inevitable in such a situation and a new global outbreak is only a matter of time.
It is not surprising that virologists and geneticists around the world are seriously concerned about finding a means to prevent severe infection, especially dangerous for the weakened, elderly and children.
The ineffectiveness of modern strategies for preventing influenza epidemics is due to the fact that the main component of many modern vaccines is the protein hemagglutinin.
It is used as an antigen that "trains" the immune system to recognize a similar virus protein, which allows the body to successfully find and destroy the causative agent of the disease.
But it is this protein that mutates exceptionally quickly, and the vaccine that was effective last year will be useless next year. Therefore, seasonal flu vaccines need to be constantly modified, and the vaccination should be repeated annually.
Specialists from the University of Georgia decided to correct this situation and approached the problem from the other side.
The new vaccine proposed by the researchers of the laboratory of Bao-Zhong Wang (Bao-Zhong Wang) is a nanoparticle consisting of two proteins of the influenza virus, which previously scientists had not placed much bets on.
One of them, the M2e protein, is found in all strains of the influenza virus and there are practically no differences in its structure in different pathogens. In addition, M2e mutates very slowly.
The second protein, the enzyme neuraminidase, also evolves much slower than other viral proteins and "lives" on the surface of a variety of influenza viruses.
Using these substances, the experts created a two-layer nanostructure in which the core is M2e with neuraminidase applied to it.
Tests of the resulting vaccine, as usual, were carried out on laboratory rodents. The drug was administered intramuscularly twice with an interval of four weeks. Then the "vaccinated" mice were infected with six different influenza viruses.
Studies of the blood serum of experimental subjects conducted 21 days after vaccination showed that the immunity of animals was fully armed and actively protected rodents from all six strains of the virus.
Scientists emphasize that their proposed combination is a universal means of preventing influenza. Moreover, the drug, "focused" on slowly mutating virus proteins, eliminates the need for seasonal vaccination.
By the way, further control studies have shown that the vaccine retains its effectiveness for a long time. The mice did not get the flu even four months after the immunization.
"The combination of antigens provided the animals with strong cross-protection against various strains of the influenza virus. Every season a new influenza pathogen comes, and we hope that the nanoparticle vaccine will be able to protect a person from a variety of viral strains," said Ye Wang, one of the authors of the scientific work, in a university press release.
Now researchers continue to improve their "two-layer" vaccine. According to the university's website, at the next stage, scientists plan to load the drug into microneedle patches for painless vaccination through the skin.
However, there is no information yet about how soon specialists will start testing the vaccine on humans.
A detailed description of the development of American scientists is published in the publication Advanced Healthcare Materials (Wang .et al., Double‐Layered M2e‐NA Protein Nanoparticle Immunization Induces Broad Cross‐Protection against Different Influenza Viruses in Mice).
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