"The First Lab To Conduct Clinical Human Trials For A Universal Flu Vaccine" - Erin Billups
The strains for the next flu season’s vaccine have already been chosen by the World Health Organization. "They have to predict the future, right? And that's hard to do," said Florian Krammer, PhD, associate professor of microbiology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. "If the strains change in the meantime, there's nothing that can be done about it.” This is why scientists like Dr. Krammer have been working for nearly a decade to create a universal flu vaccine that protects against all influenza strains. "We were always thinking that antibodies could only target one strain of influenza, and they don't cross-protect against the other strains, but it turns out that there are rare antibodies that can actually cross-neutralize," Dr. Krammer said. Dr. Krammer's lab is funded by the National Institutes of Health and is the first to conduct clinical human trials for a universal vaccine. They're targeting the part of the virus that provokes an immune response: a protein shaped like a mushroom. Dr. Krammer's lab is among several focusing on the stalk of the so-called mushroom. The possibility of winters free of aggressive flu epidemics could be in the not-too-distant future.
- Florian Krammer, PhD, Associate Professor, Microbiology, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
