Are you ready to pay attention to influenza yet?
@RandPaul @RobertKennedyJr @SenRonJohnson
In reviewing the article on Ralph Baric and Yoshi Kawaoka featured by MIT, I realized I missed something. They were conducting gain of function with Spanish Influenza in the USA as well as the Netherlands.
This led me to an article titled: A possible European origin of the Spanish influenza and the first attempts to reduce mortality to combat superinfecting bacteria: an opinion from a virologist and a military historian. Pages 2009-2012 | Received 21 Jan 2019, Accepted 09 Apr 2019, Published online: 23 May 2019
In modern times, the ingenuity of immunologists and molecular biologists has been applied to the design of so-called ‘universal influenza vaccines’.
There is the hope of a broader-based immune response, even covering new pandemic viruses.
Many of these new vaccines are composed of peptides of the influenza hemagglutinin, particularly from the stalk region, which is antigenically related between the HA subtypes.
Other researchers have made experimental vaccines, using the internal influenza virus proteins M, NP, and polymerase PA, PB1, PB2, and also M2e.
An underlying research strategy is to formulate novel vaccines to increase the magnitude of CD8 and CD4 T-cell memory to influenza proteins.
**Two such vaccines have reached clinical testing in the community in the European Union.**
@I_Am_JohnCullen @Leeshotfury1966
Impagliazzo A, Milder F, Kuipers H, Wagner MV, Zhu X, Hoffman RM, van Meersbergen R, Huizingh J, Wanningen P, Verspuij J, et al. A stable trimeric influenza hemagglutinin stem as a broadly protective immunogen. ScienceExpress. 2015; 349: 1301–06.
Fiers W, De Filette M, Birkett A, Neirynck S, Min Jou W. A ‘universal’ human influenza A vaccine. Virus Res. 2004;103:173–76.
Oxford J, Gill D. Unanswered questions about the 1918 influenza pandemic: origin, pathology, and the virus itself. Lancet Infect Dis. 2018 June 20;18:e348–e354.
Yassine HM, Boyington JC, McTamney PM, Wei CJ, Kanekiyo M, Kong WP, Gallagher JR, Wang L, Zhang Y, Joyce MG, et al. Hemagglutinin-stem nanoparticles generate heterosubtypic influenza protection. Nat Med. 2015 August;1–6.
Krammer F, Palese P, Steel J. Advances in universal virus vaccine design and antibody mediated therapies based on conserved regions of the hemagglutinin. Curr Top Microbiol Immunol. 2015;386:301–21. doi:10.1007/82_2014_408.
Ortiz JR, Hickling J, Jones R, Donabedian A, Engelhardt OG, Katz JM, Madhi SA, Neuzil KM, Rimmelzwaan GF, Southern J, et al. Report on eighth WHO meeting on developments of influenza vaccines that induce broadly protective and long-lasting immune responses: chicago, 23-24 August 2016. Vaccine. 2018;36:932–38. doi:10.1016/j.vaccine.2017.
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