There will be no more flu

RNA-based antiviral vaccines are being developed in Germany. They can become a universal means of combating any strains of influenza - existing and future.

Man vs. Flu: This protracted standoff is like a war on schedule. Every winter we are bombarded with hordes of another strain. Few people take care of defense in advance and get vaccinated; most run the risk of meeting the enemy face to face and simply getting sick. If no complications occur, the flu becomes harmless. Until next winter and the next invasion.

Antibodies that the immune system has developed during illness or after vaccination will instantly destroy any viruses of the same strain, recognizing them by protein molecules on the surface of the viral particle. However, these marker molecules in influenza are extremely variable, and very soon the virus returns in the guise of a new strain that is not recognized by the immune system.

Every year, the renewed war affects up to 15% of the human population of the Earth and claims up to half a million lives. Our main allies in this are vaccines, drugs that are prepared from proteins of destroyed viral particles. Without causing the disease itself, they allow the immune system to get acquainted with the new enemy in advance and prepare to meet it by synthesizing antibodies.

German researchers propose to radically change this approach. Instead of a drug made from proteins, you can graft RNA into the carrier of the genes for these proteins. If you protect RNA with a “sheath” of special molecules, immune cells in the blood will not destroy it instantly and even synthesize a viral protein based on it in order to prepare for a possible attack and produce antibodies. This is how immunity is formed.

It takes a matter of weeks to produce such a vaccine, and this has been proven in practice - RNA-based antitumor vaccines have already been developed and tested by CureVac . But speed is not even their main advantage.

RNA can carry information about any of the viral proteins, including those that are usually successfully hidden by the virus in the depths, so that antibodies are not formed on them. They are the most important for the virus; they ensure its binding to the host cell and the introduction of its genetic information into it. These proteins are the least variable and may be the same in many strains.

An RNA vaccine containing the gene for one of these proteins may have a broader effect—ideally universal, against any strain of influenza. There is hope for such a development of events.

Based on the methods developed at CureVac, Professor Lothar Stitz and his team produced an RNA vaccine against influenza, which they then tested in animals and showed that it creates immunity that protects against several strains at once. Stitz is confident that a few more steps and we will have a universal vaccine.

He is not the only one who thinks so. The British company SEEK is testing its FLU-v vaccine based on one of the extremely conserved influenza proteins. Perhaps the flu is living out its last years - and it will suffer the fate of smallpox, tetanus and other terrible diseases of the past. One injection in childhood - and no more winter invasions.