One Step Closer To A One-Time, Universal Influenza Vaccine

A robust, early CD8+ T-cell response is associated with a faster recovery from H7N9 influenza infections.

AsianScientist (May 20, 2015) – Researchers have cracked the riddle of how flu-killing immune cells memorize distinct strains of influenza, a finding which could lead to novel cellular memory-implant technologies resulting in a one-shot flu jab for life.

The study on how ‘killer’ CD8+ T-cells—the body’s ‘army of hitmen’ tasked with taking out new viruses—retain memories of virus strains they encounter was published in the journal Nature Communications.

University of Melbourne’s Associate Professor Katherine Kedzierska explained how the Australia-Sino collaboration began during the first outbreak of the avian-derived H7N9 virus in China in 2013.

“We’d never seen anything like H7N9,” Kedzierska said. “The virus was infecting more people rapidly and nobody had immunity. Thankfully, we did manage to contain the virus but we knew we had come face-to-face with a potential pandemic that could kill millions of people around the world if the virus became able to spread between humans,” she said.

That contagion saw 99 percent of people infected hospitalized, with a 30 percent mortality rate. Patient zero was an elderly man who caught the virus from a chicken his wife asked him to buy at the local live bird market.

“After collecting samples from infected patients, we found that people who couldn’t make these T-cell flu assassins were dying. These findings lead to the potential of moving from vaccines for specific influenza strains toward developing a protection, which is based on T-cells,” Kedzierska said.

“From the 30 percent mortality rate in China we knew the clock was ticking on the situation. Had the contagion spread broken out globally, we’re talking about a history-altering event on the Spanish Flu scale. As it turns out, boosting the T-cell adaptive memory capacity is our way in,” she said.

The research was led by the University of Melbourne and the Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center and Fudan University, with scientists from St Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

“Our discovery could lead to the development of a vaccine component that can protect against all new influenza viruses, with the potential for future development of a one-off universal flu vaccine shot,” Kedzierska added.

“This work will also help clinicians to make early predictions of how well a patient’s immune system will respond to viruses so they can manage early interventions such as artificial ventilation more effectively, particularly in cases where the patient is at risk of dying.”

Highlighting the significance of the study, co-author and Nobel Laureate Professor Peter Doherty from the University of Melbourne said:

“After spending the past 40 years working on the virus-specific ‘killer’ T-cells, this is the first study from our group that shows their role in protecting people against a novel human influenza A virus.”

Professor Xu, who co-led the study from Fudan University, said that this study would inform T-cell based vaccine development and immune intervention during severe influenza infection in the future.

The article can be found at: Wang et al. (2015) Recovery From Severe H7N9 Disease Is Associated With Diverse Response Mechanisms Dominated By CD8+ T Cells.

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Source: The University of Melbourne.
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