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Austrian virologists led the phase 1 study of a new influenza vaccine that lasts longer.
While the world awaits mass vaccination against the Sars-CoV-2 coronavirus, other viruses that are not entirely harmless escape attention, especially since the social distancing prescribed everywhere is also disrupting its business. But the flu viruses will return. Because their greatest asset is their versatility, Sars-CoV-2 is (hopefully) far inferior to them. This allows them to survive vaccines well, although current vaccines already combine three to four strains of influenza virus (inactivated, of course) to counteract their variability.
Influenza viruses are particularly versatile in terms of the protein with which they attach themselves to the cells they attack, that is, the counterpart of the notorious Sars-CoV-2 spike protein. They call it hemagglutinin protein because it can also cause red blood cells (heme) to clump together (clump together), which biochemists abbreviate as HA. It is precisely to this HA that antibodies are directed, whose production is supposed to stimulate influenza vaccines. But they often turn out to be blunt weapons because the virus underwent a mutation between vaccination and infection that changed the HA in such a way that the antibody no longer fits well. Then they will be one step ahead in the race of evolution.
In the neck of protein!
However, these mutations mainly affect the part of the HA with which it attaches itself to cell receptors, its head, as virologists say. Your neck changes much less often. That is why the Austrian virologists Peter Palese and Florian Krammer from Mount Sinai Hospital in New York rely on this neck, which they combine with different heads, this is called chimeric vaccines. With a two-step vaccination (with different HA heads), they teach the immune system to produce antibodies that respond to the neck and not the head of the protein. They have now tested this strategy in a phase 1 study with 65 participants. In “Nature Medicine” (December 7) they report a strong immune response lasting at least 18 months.
