Is A Universal Flu Vaccine Still A Lifetime Away?

Getting A Truly Universal Flu Vaccine To Market Will Be A Mammoth Task

Influenza is a wily foe. It shows up each winter having taken a slightly different guise to outwit our existing immune defenses, but always keeps up its sleeve an ability to shapeshift to an entirely new form that could crash straight through them.

universal-flu
How long until a truly universal flu vaccine is a reality? • Source: Shutterstock

Flu manages to be quotidian yet casts a shade over our collective consciousness – the 100 years that have passed since the Spanish Flu pandemic infected about one third of the world’s population and killed at least 50 million people have not banished its specter.

A century on and we rely on constant vigilance and regularly updated flu vaccines to keep up with the virus,...

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