University of Washington flu researchers developing “universal flu vaccine”
SEATTLE — A team of flu researches and microbiologists at the University of Washington are working on a way to possibly eliminate your yearly flu vaccine prick.
They are working on a new concept called a universal flu vaccine that eliminates the guess work when it comes to making vaccines.
The current challenge to making vaccines is that doctors have to predict the strain of flu that will be prevalent. They can sometimes be wrong and that year’s vaccine won’t be as effective. The challenge come’s from the flu virus’s tendency to constantly mutate.
What the UW team is working comes down to DNA, within the flu virus, except it uses the non-mutating genetic markers from the virus to develop a vaccine.
The vaccine would then be administered by painlessly puffing it into your skin cells, which would then produce the antibodies needed to fight off the flu, regardless of the strain that year.
COPYRIGHT 2023 BY KXLY. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. THIS MATERIAL MAY NOT BE PUBLISHED, BROADCAST, REWRITTEN OR REDISTRIBUTED.
