Source: Wikipedia http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File: Drawing-syringes-with-needle.jpg
With the coming of winter, flu season is upon us and many of our healthcare providers have begun encouraging us to get vaccinated against this deadly influenza virus. The threat of seasonal flu is felt across the globe, causing 250,000 to 500,000 deaths per year, and is the first leading cause death by infectious disease in children. Despite its occurrence being so widespread, there has been no vaccine developed that can provide complete protection from the virus, that it is to say, no vaccine until this past year. Researchers at the Imperial College London have recently come up with a “blueprint” for, what they believe to be is, a universal flu vaccine.
This theoretical vaccine would be taking a newer approach to vaccination, and could potentially be used against all existing forms of the flu as well as any new flu strains that may develop. One of the reasons for the flu being an annual reoccurring problem is that the virus has the ability to continuously change its outer physical characteristics, so that it is no longer recognized by your body’s immune system; in particular by your antibodies.
Influenza Virus: Source Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virus
All conventional vaccinations act to provide the body with antibodies against a specific pathogen type, so that when you are exposed to that disease your body will be prepared to easily clear the infection. While this form of vaccination is successful against many diseases such as small pox, diphtheria, and measles, it is much less effective against the influenza virus as the changing of the viral-surface renders the antibodies obsolete. The aim of this new universal vaccine, however, is not to activate the immune system’s antibodies but rather activate an entirely different area of our immune system, that being our CD8+ T-cells.
CD8 Tcell Source Wikipedia: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File: Blausen_0625_Lymphocyte_T_cell.png
Rather than recognize a virus by its surface characteristics, as is the case with antibodies, a CD8+T-cell will identify a virus by its internal material that is common to all strains of that virus. Now you may ask, if there is another more effective way of clearing the flu, why doesn’t our body simply use T-cells and forget about antibodies? The problem is, that when faced with infection, our body is ‘hard-wired’ to first use an antibody response since that is usually the best defence against most diseases. Unfortunately that is not the case with influenza, and it is for that reason that this new vaccine aims to by-pass the antibody response and activate the T-cell response instead.
Despite the discovery that T-cell mediated immunity is effective against the flu and that a theoretical blueprint has been made using this information, an actual vaccine which can be mass-produced and distributed is still quite a few years away. However, researchers are encouraged by their results thus far, and believe that an effective vaccine is not only plausible, but inevitable.
-Natasha Smyrnis
References
Cellular immune correlates of protection against symptomatic pandemic influenza, Scientists take big step towards universal flu vaccine, Vaccination, CD8+ T cell effector mechanisms in resistance to infection.
