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Vaccines

Broad protection from a single flu vaccine

Nature Reviews Microbiology volume 21, page 67 (2023)Cite this article

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Influenza virus is a persistent global health threat responsible for four pandemics since the turn of the twentieth century. The large diversity of influenza viruses represents a major barrier to preventing the next pandemic, with at least 18 influenza virus strains known to circulate in animal reservoirs. Several universal influenza virus vaccines are in development to target a number of conserved epitopes found across the different influenza virus strains, although these types of vaccine are difficult to manufacture and are weakly immunogenic. Now, Arevalo et al. leverage advances in nucleic acid-based vaccine technology leading to the development of a nucleoside-modified mRNA–lipid nanoparticle vaccine encoding separate haemagglutinin antigens from all known influenza virus subtypes. The vaccine induced high levels of cross-reactive and subtype-specific antibodies in both mice and ferrets. When challenged with matched and mismatched viral strains, vaccinated mice and ferrets were protected from illness and death. These findings suggest that mRNA vaccines might hold the potential to protect against future pandemics by providing protection against diverse influenza virus subtypes.

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Original article

  • Arevalo, C. P. et al. A multivalent nucleoside-modified mRNA vaccine against all known influenza virus subtypes. Science 378, 899–904 (2022)

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  1. Nature Reviews Microbiology http://www.nature.com/nrmicro/

    Michael Attwaters

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  1. Michael Attwaters
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Correspondence to Michael Attwaters.

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Attwaters, M. Broad protection from a single flu vaccine. Nat Rev Microbiol 21, 67 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41579-022-00849-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41579-022-00849-z

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