Universal influenza vaccine can be used as new way to fight against influenza

Autumn is called a season of influenza because influenza occurs frequently in Autum days. As cold virus is constantly mutating, researchers find themselve engaged in major influenza viruses popular in last season every year, and forcast the possible virus that might become pandemic in next season, and then try to develop vaccine that can be used to treat influenza which might be popular in the season. in doing so, a lot of manpower and material resources have been invested, sometimes, however, it still does not work. Besides, most vaccine are grown in egg yolk and intracellular, so it needs at least six months to develop good vaccine. Under the circumstance, it will be very difficult to curb the spread of epidemic particularly when large outbreak of influenza in a sudden time.

Lothar Stizz, a German researcher in Friedrich Loeffler Institute , has figured out a new idea to produce universal influenza vaccine within few weeks, and one injection of such vaccine might lead to lifelong immunity. Days ago, he overheard several of his collegues were taking advantage of mRNA( RNA, a gene which can control the formation of protein) to develop a genetic vaccine which can cure cancer. Their research inpired him and he hope this can deal with epidemic disease by using similar method.

When it comes to treating influenza, immune system of human body has two mechanism , one of which is antibody response, namely, when immune system recognizes a certain kind of protein of cold virus, it will activate the react of antibody. The occurrence of such response is mainly because patient once was infected with the virus and leads to the existence of its antibody, or because the patient has been injected coresponding vaccine and result in the existence of such antibody. The second mechanism is cell-mediated immunity, that is, some lymphocyte is activated and be able to recoganize and attack those infected cells by cold virus. What traditional influenza virus did is just to activate the response of antibody, while Lothar Stizzs genetic vaccine can lead to cell-mediating immune response so that it can attack all cold virus strain of the same category, meanwhile, response of antibody can be activated by a special viral strain. In short, patient need to be shot a certain vaccine which includes genetic code of mRNA, and then human body can be found with a certain protein which can start body mechanism to treat virus. It only takes six weeks to produce such vaccine that can be preserved at room temperature. At present, related clinical test has been carried out for nearly six years on animals like mouses, ferrets and pigs, and it has been proved an effective treatment, but when it comes to human beings, the result is far from satisfactory. It is hoped that such universal influenza virus can be used to treat people as soon as possible.