Say ‘goodbye’ to the seasonal flu shot
February 9, 2011
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Elizabeth Haggarty
TORONTO STAR
A new universal flu vaccine could spell the end of seasonal jabs.
Researchers at the University of Oxford’s Jenner Lab are developing a vaccine that targets the common proteins found in all flu viruses instead of tailoring to seasonal flu. The result: instead of having to have a newly concocted flu shot developed each year, the same can be used again and again.
“The problem with flu is that you've got lots of different strains and they keep changing,” Adrian Hill, director of the Jenner Institute behind the research, told the Guardian. “Occasionally one comes out of wildfowl or pigs and we're not immune to it. We need new vaccines and we can't make them fast enough.”
A universal vaccine would allow immunization programs to be rolled out throughout the year, preventing the pandemics and deaths that arise in the four month period it normally takes for a vaccine to be developed.
Between 2,000 to 4,000 Canadians — mostly seniors — die each year from pneumonia related to flu or complications from flu, according to the Health Canada website.
“If we were using the same vaccine year in, year out, it would be more like vaccinating against other diseases like tetanus,” Dr Sarah Gilbert, the lead scientist behind the vaccine research told the Guardian. “It would become a routine vaccination that would be manufactured and used all the time at a steady level. We wouldn't have these sudden demands or shortages – all that would stop.”
Gilbert and her team started human trials of the vaccine by infecting 22 people, all aged over 50, with the H3N2 flu virus. Half of the participants had been given the universal vaccine while the other 11 were left without any type of jab. The volunteers runny noses, sore throats and coughs were then monitored as well as the amount of mucus each produced.
The results showed those who endured the experimental flu shot got off lightly compared to their unprotected flu suffering counterparts.
“Fewer of the people who were vaccinated got flu than the people who weren't vaccinated,” Gilbert told the Guardian.
While traditional vaccines have focused on prompting the immune system to create antibodies against a particular disease, Gilbert’s universal vaccine is the first to work by boosting the body’s T-cell levels. T-cells are the part of the immune system used to isolate and destroy cells infected with a virus.
“We did get an indication that the vaccine was protecting people, not only from the numbers of people who got flu but also from looking at their T-cells before we gave them flu,” Gilbert told the paper. “The people we vaccinated had T-cells that were more activated. The people we hadn't vaccinated had T-cells as well but they were in a resting state so they would probably have taken longer to do anything. The volunteers we vaccinated had T-cells that were activated, primed and ready to kill. There were more T-cells in people we vaccinated and they were more activated.”
Traditional vaccines are 70-80 per cent effective in young people, but only 30-40 per cent effective in the older crowd. The researchers hope that by boosting the body’s T-cell levels, the vaccines will help the elderly fend of disease more effectively, by boosting the body’s ability to fight.
The vaccine is expected to be available to the public in five years.
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