Vaccine shows signs of protection against dozen-plus flu strains

Science Daily  March 3, 2021
Influenza A virus infection in swine impacts the agricultural industry in addition to its zoonotic potential. A team of researchers in the US (University of Nebraska, St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital, TN, Los Alamos National Laboratory) designed a universal swine H3 influenza vaccine using epigraph, a computational algorithm. The epigraph hemagglutinin proteins were delivered using an Adenovirus type 5 vector and compared to a wild type of hemagglutinin and the commercial inactivated vaccine, FluSure. In mice, epigraph vaccination leads to significant cross-reactive antibody and T-cell responses against a diverse panel of swH3 isolates. Epigraph vaccination also reduces weight loss and lung viral titers in mice after challenge with three divergent swH3 viruses. In both murine and swine models, epigraph vaccination shows superior cross-reactive immunity that should be further investigated as a universal swH3 vaccine…read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLE 

Characterization of the epigraph vaccine constructs. Credit: Nature Communications volume 12, Article number: 1203 (2021)