The coronavirus made it clear to us that human beings are extraordinary when it comes to researching and developing new medicines when they really matter. That is why the flu, the virus that takes thousands of lives a year around the world, may have its days numbered thanks to a new universal vaccine.
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The times to develop a vaccine, until 2020, were between 8 and 10 years. Within a decade, the pharmaceutical companies managed to carry out the entire legal and scientific process to ensure that the vaccine was effective and safe. The coronavirus broke that trend: from 10 years to just 11 months.
And best of all, the resulting vaccines (the RNA ones) were the most effective created to date, up to 92%. To get an idea, until then, a vaccine with 50% effectiveness was considered a success. Now that the corona is “controlled”, it’s time for the flu.
Researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) are starting a phase 1 trial in humans to test a new universal flu vaccine.
The trial will test the new vaccine given as a nasal spray or by injection, after the studies in animals they demonstrated their good results.
“Influenza vaccines that can provide long-lasting protection against a wide range of seasonal influenza viruses, as well as those with pandemic potential, would be invaluable public health tools.“said the now famous Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
The new vaccine has been Baptized as BPL-1357, it is a multivalent whole-virus vaccine that contains inactivated copies of four particular strains of influenza: H1N9, H3N8, H5N1 y H7N3.
In a preclinical study with mice and ferrets it was found that two doses of the experimental vaccine were 100% protective against fatal doses of six different strains of influenza.
Promisingly, these animal studies also showed that the vaccine was just as effective when given as a nasal spray compared to the more traditional intramuscular injection.
The phase 1 trial will recruit up to 100 healthy subjects randomized into three groups: intranasal, intramuscular or placebo. The study will last seven months and its main objective will be to investigate the immune responses and the safety profiles of the new vaccine.
They hope the trial will establish the potential of this novel vaccine to generate not only broad antibody responses, but also a more direct mucosal immune response in nasal cells exposed to the intranasal version of the vaccine.
Intranasal vaccines are a hot research topic right nowwith much work exploring how inhalable vaccines could effectively prevent respiratory viruses at the point of entry into the human body.
Currently, several intranasal vaccines against COVID-19 are in developmentwith the suggestion that they might prevent infection by training immune cells in the mucous membranes of the nose so that they recognize the virus and kill it immediately on first exposure.
Of course, this is not at all the first research attempting to solve the problem of a universal flu vaccine. The last few decades have been littered with failed attempts, and other universal flu vaccines are in various stages of development.
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