Scientists are regularly forced to develop new types of flu vaccines due to the fact that this virus adapts extremely well to the drugs that resist it and mutates. However, it is not the first year that a so-called "universal vaccine" against influenza has been developed, which can protect people from most strains of the virus. And recently, one of the first such vaccines has passed a series of tests.
Most modern vaccines use viral antibodies that trigger an immune response and "spur" the immune system to fight the virus. But the flu, as already mentioned, in just one season adapts to such conditions and changes, so after a year the vaccination must be repeated. The new vaccine has a slightly different approach to production: mRNA molecules are used to encode proteins. At the cellular level, this is as close as possible to the conditions of a real infection (but without infection), which causes a powerful immune response.
Now scientists have conducted a series of tests on mice. In this case, the effect of the experimental vaccine persisted for 30 weeks. Moreover, even after the expiration of this period, the protective effect weakens for a very long time. The mRNA molecules themselves are "enveloped" with lipid particles in order not to cause a rejection reaction before the immune cells reach them. In the future, scientists want to conduct tests with other animals, and in 2 years to begin full-scale clinical trials in humans. According to the authors,
“If, in human clinical trials, a vaccine works at least 50 percent as it did in mice, it would be a huge achievement. Such a vaccine will allow a large number of people to get one shot every few years and practically forget about the flu."
Vladimir Kuznetsov