This is important, and an interesting read for your future health. What if you could be vaccinated only once and remain protected against flu or COVID-19 for a lifetime? As well as the personal convenience, public health costs and waste would be drastically reduced. Work is already underway on achieving these lofty goals.
The National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) work on a universal flu vaccine is already well advanced, with human trials beginning now. The new formulation, called BPL-1357, contains a variety of killed avian influenza viruses designed to cover any new strains that are likely to emerge in coming years. It is also likely to be available as a nasal spray.
Separately, Pfizer-BioNTech announced that clinical trials of their next-generation shots will begin later this year. As COVID-19 is a relatively new disease, research in this area is more complex. COVID-19 vaccines wane in efficacy as the SARS-CoV-2 virus mutates over time. To guard against this, a universal vaccine may have components that enhance T-cell production to protect against severe disease, or it could use an approach that protects against as many coronaviruses as possible.
One potential advantage of a universal coronavirus vaccine is protection against any novel coronaviruses from animal disease reservoirs that spill over into the human population.
There is still a way to go before seeing either universal vaccine graduate from the laboratory to the clinic, but news of these human clinical trials suggests that we are now closer to “once in a lifetime” shots than ever before.
To learn more about the development of new universal vaccines for flu and COVID-19, go to “Flu vaccine: NIH to test universal shot” and “Universal COVID-19 vaccine candidate to enter clinical trials.”
