A new type of flu vaccine developed at the U.S. National Institutes of Health outperformed existing products in animal tests, possibly paving the way for a new generation of vaccines.
Researchers led by Gary Nabel, the former director of the Vaccine Research Center at the NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, fused a protein called hemagglutinin, on the surface of the virus, to ferritin, another protein that carries iron in the blood, creating a new type of nanoparticle that elicited broader and more potent immunity than products sold by Sanofi and Novartis AG, according to the study, published online Thursday in the journal Nature.
The result may point the way toward a so-called universal vaccine that can be used against different viruses even as they mutate to evade the immune system, Nabel said.