Researchers with the University of Georgia in Athens and the French drugmaker Sanofi Pasteur developed an influenza vaccine candidate that displayed broad protection in animal models against multiple co-circulating strains of H3N2 influenza isolated over five different flu seasons, according to research published in the Journal of Virology.
To develop the vaccine, researchers used a technique called computationally optimized broadly reactive antigen to create 17 prototype vaccines using genetic sequences obtained from multiple influenza strains. Researchers designed the vaccines to recognize multiple H3N2 strains, and one displayed 100 percent efficacy against all circulating strains in mouse and ferret models.
"One of the problems with current influenza vaccines is that the vaccine takes over six months to produce so vaccine manufacturers have to start well before flu season begins," said Ted Ross, PhD, director of UGA's Center for Vaccines and Immunology. "What our group has developed is a vaccine that protects against all co-circulating strains of H3N2 viruses, so we might be able to one day replace the seasonal flu vaccine with this more broadly cross-protective vaccine."
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