NIH closes in on development of a universal flu vaccine

Each year, scientists across the globe make highly educated guesses to determine which influenza viruses might be the most prevalent in a given season and then craft a vaccine to match a handful of the top strains. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Part of the problem is that influenza viruses are constantly mutating, and there is no vaccine to universally protect against many strains. All that could soon change, though, according to a new study, “Vaccine-Induced Antibodies that Neutralize Group 1 and Group 2 Influenza A Viruses,” published in Cell. Researchers from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health have found a protein on most strains of influenza viruses that has helped them to identify three types of vaccine-induced antibodies effective in neutralizing influenza A infection. Influenza A viruses are the source of seasonal influenza infection in about 10% of the population. Other types of...