Source: Radio New Zealand
File photo. CDC
If you get a regular flu vaccine, you may be well aware that it protects against the most prevalent strains. But because influenza viruses evolve rapidly, the flu vaccine is updated annually to provide protection against new strains.
A universal flu vaccine looks to change that, providing protection against all strains of the flu – past, present, and future.
It’s a step closer to becoming a reality, with the first human trials about to take place for Centivax’s universal vaccine Centiflu 01 in Australia.
US-based immunoengineer and founder of Centivax, Dr Jacob Glanville, who is leading the trials, told RNZ’s First Up Centiflu 01 was designed to solve the problem that flu vaccines have.
“This is a single vaccine that you don’t need to change, and it focuses the immune response on parts of flu viruses that never change. So, we are expecting the efficacy, the proportion of people who take the vaccine and then don’t get sick, to be much higher than current flu shots,” he said.
Dr Glanville said the vaccine’s animal trials showed the immune response was better than the commercial vaccines, which he said are 10-60 percent effective.
“Your immune system has basically a limited budget of antibodies and T-cells that it chooses to respond randomly, normally against a virus,” he said.
“We are just adjusting that budget to make it entirely focused on the best parts of the virus to focus on.”
Dr Glanville said that while a normal flu shot doesn’t work against future viruses, hence the need for annual shots, his company’s vaccine continued to provide protection from viruses 15 years later.
“You don’t know where flu is going to mutate, except you know it’s not going to mutate on these spots that haven’t changed in thousands of years,” he said.
“… That’s sort of the big transition here. It’s making flu shots into like a normal vaccine. One that you take, and then it provides anticipatory future protection for years to come.”
Phase one of trials in Australia is the first step in a broader programme that will enrol roughly 300 healthy volunteers in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres.
Phase two of the trials would commence next year, and phase three in 2028, Dr Glanville said.
Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
