Researchers working on mRNA vaccine against all influenza viruses

Scientists have shown for the first time that an mRNA vaccine induces an immune response and provides protection against all influenza A and B viruses in mice and ferrets.

Scott Hensley, Professor of Microbiology at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania (USA), and his co-authors recently published their research in the journal Science (DOI: 10.1126/science.abm0271). “The ‘polyvalent’ vaccine (…) that the scientists described in their publication uses the same technology used by Pfizer(/BioNTech) and Moderna for the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine,” the US University wrote. “Testing in animal models has shown that this vaccine significantly reduces symptoms of the disease and protects against death even when animals are exposed to flu variants other than those found in the vaccine.”

mRNA vaccine against all influenza viruses

“The idea was to create a vaccine that would give people basic memory immunity against different strains of flu. That should mean a lot less sickness and death in the next flu epidemic,” said Scott Hensley.

During the past pandemic years, mRNA technology has helped produce highly effective vaccines extremely quickly. “Vaccines can also be changed more quickly than current flu vaccines. Today they mostly contain dead viruses (or protein fragments; note) and 90 percent of them are reproduced in chicken embryos (that’s six months per year). Billion eggs are needed. Production isn’t just expensive. , but also time-consuming,” Deutsches Ärzteblatt wrote on the new findings.

Various advantages of mRNA vaccines

In general, mRNA vaccines can also be produced much cheaper and adapted more quickly. Antigens no longer need to be produced artificially. Instead, vaccinates are injected with RNA for antigens. Vaccine production takes place in the body of the vaccinated person.

For experiments on mice and ferrets, US scientists used an mRNA vaccine containing the genetic material of 18 known hemagglutinin species of influenza A viruses and two variants of the protein of influenza B viruses. Hemagglutinin is the protein of the influenza virus with which the human immune system reacts with an immune response after an infection or (prophylactic) vaccination.

Early successes in mouse and ferret animal models

In mice, the mRNA vaccine elicited the expected antibody response to all 20 flu variants. The antibody concentration in the blood did not decrease after 118 days. That could speak for a season of protection.

In the first preclinical tests, mice were vaccinated against certain deaths from the flu. Vaccinated ferrets also survived the infection, which is about 50 percent fatal without vaccination in this animal species. Since all known hemagglutinin variants are included in the candidate vaccine, such a vaccine could possibly also help against avian flu.

(APA/Red)

Source: Vienna

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