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Super Awesome influenza antibodies: Slightly more helpful than Super Awesome HIV antibodies
*heavy-sigh*
HIV Research World is infecting other fields:
A Highly Conserved Neutralizing Epitope on Group 2 Influenza A VirusesMedia coverage of referenced paper:
Discovery of Natural Antibody Brings a Universal Flu Vaccine a Step CloserNo, it doesnt. Unless if by 'universal flu vaccine' you actually mean 'gene therapy for everyone instead of flu shots'.
Look, heres what happens-- Scientists sift through thousands and thousands and thousands of B-cells, the cells that make antibodies, and ID ones that make antibodies that are really good at neutralizing lots of different kinds of influenza or HIV.
What you have out the end is a neat laboratory reagent.
You do not have a potential vaccine.
That is because everyones immune system is random, at its core. Random mutation and natural selection in response to a pathogen. Now, you will make antibodies to protect you against chickenpox, and I will make antibodies to protect me against chickenpox, but our antibodies will be totally different. You cannot make two different people generate identical antibodies to an identical pathogen or vaccine, even identical twins. You certainly cannot make people generate a specific antibody unless you are doing it via gene therapy.
I will say that at least with a Super Awesome influenza antibody, that could at least be helpful as a therapy in emergency situations. For instance, someone who is bitten by a rabid bat gets passive immunotherapy in the form of 'medical' antibodies against the rabies virus. These arent antibodies that the infected person made, they are antibodies made in a lab or in a horse injected with a viral protein. The same principle might work in people infected with a severe form of influenza, or a drug resistant influenza, or maybe someone who is just very old or young and cant deal with the virus on their own. A passively administered Super Awesome antibody...
B Herr
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