Chinese scientists create flu vaccine from live virus using “revolutionary” approach

Chinese researchers said they may have found a simple, convenient and potentially “revolutionary” new approach to create effective vaccines by just genetically tweaking live viruses to make them capable of activating the immune system but unable to replicate in healthy cells. In a proof-of-principle study, the vaccine they developed against flu proved effective in mice, guinea pigs and ferrets, the researchers reported in the U.S. journal Science. “We believe our approach will become a general, simple and convenient approach for generation of live virus vaccines adapted to almost any viruses,” Professor Deming Zhou of Peking University, who led the study, told Xinhua. “This will help control pandemics of influenza and other life-threatening RNA viruses.” A major challenge for converting infectious viruses, such as those responsible for influenza, Ebola, Zika and AIDS pandemics, into live vaccines is to render them as avirulent as possible while maintaining their high infectivity to elicit sufficient immunity, Zhou said,...