According to a scientist, a universal flu vaccine could be available in two years.

All-virus vaccination hailed as crucial step in preventing potentially disastrous flu pandemic.

It is helpful to first examine the immune system in order to comprehend how vaccines function. The immune system's various cells perform a variety of tasks, but two crucial ones are recognizing and eliminating pathogens that are invading the body, such as viruses or bacteria.

These are recognized by lymphocytes, which are specialised cells in the human body that have the duty of searching for potentially harmful molecules or cells and remembering their appearance. They accomplish this by recognising particular antigens, or surface markers, on their body.

According to a renowned scientist, a universal flu vaccine that guards against every strain of the virus might be accessible in the following two years.

Mice and ferrets were protected from severe influenza by an experimental vaccine based on the same mRNA technology used in the wildly popular Covid jabs, opening the door for human clinical trials.

The vaccine developed at the University of Pennsylvania could be accessible the following winter, according to Prof. John Oxford of Queen Mary University of London, who was not involved in the work.

I can't stress enough how groundbreaking this paper is, Oxford said. "The potential is enormous, and I believe that these powerful respiratory viruses are sometimes underestimated."

The latest development, which was published in Science, is seen as a significant step towards a vaccine that could help protect people from a potentially devastating flu pandemic. Researchers have been working on universal flu vaccines for more than a decade.

Every year, seasonal flu vaccines are updated to make sure they are a good match for flu viruses that are currently circulating. These vaccines offer protection against up to four strains of the virus. The new vaccine aims to strengthen the immune system's defences against all 20 influenza A and B subtypes, potentially preparing the body to combat any flu virus that might emerge.

When a virus spread from pigs to humans in 2009, the world last went through a pandemic of the flu. While the 1918 flu pandemic showed how dangerous new strains could be, killing tens of millions of people, that outbreak was far less deadly than health officials had anticipated.

When the next flu pandemic strikes, giving people a "baseline" level of immunity against all flu strains could result in significantly less illness and fatalities, according to Dr. Scott Hensley, a researcher on the Pennsylvania team. Studies on mice and ferrets revealed that the mRNA flu vaccine induced significant levels of antibodies that were both protective against the virus and stable for several months.

Clinical trials are required to determine whether the vaccine protects humans in the same way it protects animals without having unfavourable side effects, even though the results from the animal tests are encouraging. The vaccine makes regulators wonder whether they should give their approval to a shot that could protect against viruses that have the potential to cause a pandemic but have not yet done so.

“This vaccine has only been tested in animals to date and it will be important to investigate its safety and efficacy in humans,” said Dr Andrew Freedman, a reader in infectious diseases at Cardiff University. “It does seem a very promising approach to the goal of producing a universal flu vaccine as well as vaccines that protect against multiple members of other viral families such as rhino- and corona-viruses.”

The director of the Institute for Global Health and Emerging Pathogens at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, Adolfo Garca-Sastre, claimed that pandemic-risk influenza viruses are not covered by the current influenza vaccines. If this vaccine is effective in people, it will accomplish this.

He continued, "The studies are preclinical, in experimental models. "They are very promising, but we cannot be sure until clinical trials in volunteers are completed," the author says, "even though they suggest a protective capacity against all subtypes of influenza viruses."