VITN Blog Post #2: A New Synthetic DNA Vaccine for Influenza A subtypes

With flu season approaching, it has been both challenging and necessary to improve vaccines that will protect people from multiple viral strains of the influenza virus and its subtypes. Influenza A has led to a particularly high number of pneumonia and influenza related deaths in recent years (2014-2018), and although there are vaccines available, many of these current vaccines are unable to induce immunity against multiple H3N2 viruses, an influenza A subtype. Recently, scientists from the Wistar Institute used H3N2 strains from 1968-present to create a cocktail of 4 DNA vaccines, labeled pH3HA, that protect against lethal influenza A infections. The goal of pH3HA is to limit the number of vaccines needed to induce immunity against the H3N2 viruses. By being injected with this synthetic cocktail vaccine made of common sequences of the Influenza A virus, it is the hope that only one vaccine will be needed to make one immune to multiple viral strains of the influenza A subtype. If you would like to read more about this, the link is here: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/09/180906141512.htm -Jenny D