Influenza mutates rapidly, which means a new vaccine formulation is needed, yearly. An international team of researchers has identified a new antibody that fights several flu strains at once. This might give us the edge in this yearly arms race.
Influenza has a jumble of proteins on its surface called hemagglutinin and neuraminidase that is uses to enter cells. The pattern of these proteins is different in every strain of influenza, which allows it to evade your immune system even if you’ve been infected with the flu before. Basically, you don’t have antibodies that recognize the new patterns on the virus (known as antigens) until you’ve encountered the new strain. When your body has become sensitized to a pathogen, it can prepare an adaptive immune response. Each antibody can only detect a single antigen. A vaccine provides a template of antigens to train the immune response to recognize the new strains of influenza each year. There’s a certain amount of guess work involved, though.
The newly isolated antibody, known as CT149, could vastly improve treatment. It bypasses the mixed-up pattern of proteins on the surface of virus particles. Instead, CT149 binds to the hemagglutinin stem region, which is identical on multiple strains of the virus, and it doesn’t mutate every year. This antibody was isolated from the blood of patients infected with the pandemic H1N1 influenza virus in 2009. Researchers injected mice with doses of CT149, and then exposed them to four powerful strains of the flu and the mice were protected from all four.
The discovery of this antibody could point the way to new targets for vaccine research. If the hemagglutinin stem region can be exploited, future vaccines might provide better protection. Maybe one day you’ll be able to get a single vaccine that offers years of protection against the most dangerous strains of the flu……
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