The Boston Globe is reporting that scientists may have found an Achilles’ heel for the flu virus, one that would allow a vaccine to be prepared that need only be given once, not once every season!
The problem with vaccinating for viruses — one of the few real problems, not ones that are made up by antiscientists — is that viruses mutate. You can train your body’s immune system to fight a virus, but then the virus changes shape and can maneuver past your defenses. What’s new here is that scientists at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute have found a stable part of the flu virus, something that doesn’t change over time. Target that, and blammo: dead virus.
It’s not that simple, of course, and will take time to develop. But a lot of independent scientists are calling this a breakthrough. And even better, it looks like this stable component is in lots of different flu viruses, including the avian flu and the Spanish flu (which caused millions of deaths in the 1910s and was a major reason World War I ended; it killed a lot of people).
In other words, if this works out, it’ll be an incredible medical breakthrough. But that’s what medical science does: it keeps moving along, doing the needed research, finding the way medical problems actually occur, and then seeking out solutions. it doesn’t always work, but it learns from its mistakes. And the next thing you know, smallpox is gone. Polio is gone. Ignore it, or worse, fight it, and measles crops back up and starts killing kids.
The choice between science and nonsense is clear. Choose wisely.
Tip o’ the needle to Scott Hurst on Twitter.
March 29th, 2009 at 11:52 am
That’s just awesome! Though I’m sure there are some flu vaccine producing companies that are quaking in their little booties right now;). I do feel kind of sorry for them, but not enough to give up on the possibility of a one time flu vaccine.
March 29th, 2009 at 11:53 am
Nitpick, BA. Polio is still prevalent in a few, poorer parts of the world, because they don’t have access to the vaccine. (It’s one reason why more affluent countries still have people getting vaccinated, just in case someone wants to visit, say, Afghanistan.)
On the other hand, we’re getting to the point where it’s being driven out, even in the poorer parts of the world, just by putting effort into making sure those parts have free/cheap polio vaccines and that the people know what they are getting. (Read: no people spreading rumors that the vaccines are a Sinister Western Conspiracy… or at least these people being ignored by the nice WHO people explaining what a vaccine is.)
So it might be more correct to say that polio is ‘going’.
March 29th, 2009 at 12:06 pm
I think Phil meant polio has been eradicated from the developed world; many of the so-called eradicated diseases still exist in the developing world. Yet another great science update from BA, though. Thanks for the tip, Phil. Good to know that there is still research going on in these sometimes trying times.
March 29th, 2009 at 12:13 pm
Dr. Phil Plait:
Just like bloody creationists!
March 29th, 2009 at 12:16 pm
Whoa, more liquid stuff with pathogens to fill up your children with! LOL
I love it when you post vaccination entries!
March 29th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
Dr. Phil Plait:
Just like the bloody Bible!
March 29th, 2009 at 12:22 pm
Yay for knowledge!
March 29th, 2009 at 12:38 pm
I think this is promising, but I am a bit skeptical it will really be effective.
First, influenza is an RNA virus. RNA does not have the error-correcting machinery that DNA has, which means it mutates MUCH more quickly. That is why vaccines have to be made new each year. According to the articles, the part of the virus they are targeting is not normally targeted by antibodies, meaning it is not under any selective pressure. The part of the virus that is currently targeted by vaccines and antibodies mutates more quickly. If they make a vaccine for this supposedly stable part, I am concerned that mutations in the supposedly stable region that are under no selective pressure and thus didn’t get fixed in the population will suddenly be under enormous pressure and we will begin to see mutant varieties popping up.
The other issue is how, or even if, we can get the body to react to the stable component.
March 29th, 2009 at 12:38 pm
Pun intended?
March 29th, 2009 at 12:40 pm
@ gopher;
From what I understand pharma. companies don’t actually make an awful lot of money off vaccines. They’re produced very cheaply and I believe there, in fact, price controls of a type on them.
Maybe that’s just for the “non-optional” vaccines but it was my understanding, and this is a major argument against the “big-pharma.” conspiracy theory of the anti-vaxxers, that companies don’t actually make much money at all off vaccines.
This is great news. Of course, I imagine the anti-vaxxers will refuse this shot too. But still great news and I look forward to not having to get my arm stuck every single stinkin’ year.
March 29th, 2009 at 12:46 pm
March 29th, 2009 at 12:46 pm
This does sound promising. Science works.
March 29th, 2009 at 12:50 pm
But what’s to stop the virus from evolving a way around these, our new and improved immunesytems?
We thought we had aids covered with anti-retrovirals, but evolution outpaced us in the blink of an eye.
I love the fact that we’re looking for every possible ‘in’ to fight disease, but I’m rarely optimistic about our ability to beat it.
March 29th, 2009 at 12:55 pm
TheBlackCat: “Pun intended?”
You may very well think that; I could not possibly comment.
March 29th, 2009 at 1:10 pm
Well, gee, a lot of good it does me out there on the horizon.
Choose wisely.
Wait, if I choose poorly will I age really fast and disintegrate like when the guy drank from the fake Grail in Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade?
March 29th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
SCIENCE! It’s what works!
March 29th, 2009 at 1:25 pm
Just one remark: I don’t think the Spanish Flu had anything to do with the end of WW1. For one thing, the major breakthrough of the disease was in 1919 (after the war) and during the war it affected both sides, probably more so on the Allied side (Research showed it was in a American Army camp that the virus jumped from pigs to humans).
The major cause of the end of WW1 was the collapse of the German Army due to both internal (Economic collapse and communist uprisings in Germany) and external (Entrance of the US in the war, bloodletting of the German materiel and man-power during the earlier offensives) factors.
March 29th, 2009 at 1:43 pm
NOOOO ! ONE-TIME SHOT = LIFETIME AUTISM. THE BIG PHARMA WANTS TO TURN US ALL INTO AUTISTIC ROBOTS AS SOLUTION TO THEIR ECONOMIC CRISIS.
// poe
March 29th, 2009 at 1:54 pm
It’s things like this that make me wish I went into medicine instead. Every cool advance seems to be having in medicine. I don’t think even the most optimistic predictions are predicting what we will see in the next 50 years in medicine. It’s a field ripe for a quantum leap.
March 29th, 2009 at 2:34 pm
Yay! I have heard about the stem vaccination possibility, but I had no idea that they had actually tested antibodies yet.
@ TheBlackCat:
That wasn’t what I read out of the paper, albeit it is a bit speculative on this point in the absence of further experiments. They don’t rule selection out, and AFAIU may support it.
First, the stem is a functional part in the presentation of the receptor, so it should be under positive selective pressure. [My speculation, not theirs.] The pocket targeted is between the stem and the receptor attachment.
Second, they speculate based on structural analysis, that the ABs lock a “fusion protein” and the receptor in place, thus inhibiting “large structural reorganizations” required for the virus membrane fusion. [They haven't confirmed this.] If it is indeed a highly functional and reorganizing molecule complex, it should be under positive selective pressures for that too, I believe.
Third, they speculate that this part of the virus indeed gives an AB response, but that the receptor overwhelms it. “[...] Rather, we hypothesize that an immunodominant antibody response to the highly exposed globular head may overwhelm the antibody response to the F10 epitope, although it remains possible that other immune exclusion mechanism(s) may preclude natural antibody responses against it. It is not surprising that many viruses are highly adept at keeping their most crucial (and conserved) determinants of pathogenesis cryptic, [...].” Now I’m going out on a limb, not being a biologist and not running population models of this [surprise!
], but this suggests to me that there can be negative selective pressures here: the stem should give a weaker AB response than the ever changing “trojan horse” receptor, and the resulting weak response may nevertheless decide the success of the viral infection. (I.e. a weaker response may give a virus a head start to be the “viral victor” compared to any competing variants in the infected organism.)
Fourth, apparently they have tested that “this region is recalcitrant to the generation of escape mutants”. (Aren’t going to check this, it’s late and the paper is jargon heavy.) Again, not being a biologist, but doesn’t this by itself suggest that there is rather (too) large selective pressures against mutants?
Perhaps, but see point 2 and 4 above. If we are lucky the virus needs to mutate to a heavily modified coat (if it at all can), and hopefully it is rather less infectious by then?!
March 29th, 2009 at 2:44 pm
@ T_U_T:
Tut, tut.
My own lifelong dream is that “big pharma” comes up with a vaccine against autism.
[Actually, I've read that there are indications that there is a connection between autism and inflammation reactions. With any luck it is true, and with further luck also causative, whether by failing proteins à la Alzheimer or by other failures of the body. And with personal luck on my side perhaps antibodies will be the cure.
Then what would an anti-vaxxer do?
(Yes, yes, I know: abandon autism and claim vaccines causes erection problems or other dreadful things. :-\ )]
March 29th, 2009 at 3:10 pm
Why not: Vaccines cause Creationism. I guess from a statistical point of view, this is much more likely! And don’t trust any statistic, you haven’t faked yourself!
March 29th, 2009 at 3:13 pm
Given that this would be a one-time shot to replace an annual one, that would be less, not more.
March 29th, 2009 at 3:15 pm
He could still claim that the vacsine against autism in reality causes autism in the AZT causes AIDS style
March 29th, 2009 at 3:30 pm
I’ve heard that one many times before – so I’ll wait to hear the facts about it. The last time I went to a talk about how the flu had been beat was in 1996. Over 12 years later and the flu still looks fine to me.
March 29th, 2009 at 5:45 pm
QUASAR said “Whoa, more liquid stuff with pathogens to fill up your children with! LOL”
Well the solid stuff wouldn’t go through the needle very well and the gass stuff tended to cause embolisms
March 29th, 2009 at 6:17 pm
@ Torbjörn Larsson, OM
Gotta wonder, what would the antivaxx crowd do if a vaccine against autism WAS developed…
“But vaccines cause autism…”
“But vaccine prevents autism…”
*head explodes*
March 29th, 2009 at 7:18 pm
That’s incredible.
Wait.
From you it IS credible.
I wonder how many years off this vaccine is going to be. I hope it is soon.
Put me on the list for the human trials!
Kiss my feet Jenna McCarthy!
March 29th, 2009 at 7:29 pm
The Bad Astronomer :
“And the next thing you know, smallpox is gone.”
Not gone but reduced to being a “demon in the freezer” to use the title of Richard Preston’s (?) non-fiction book on the topic.
Smallpox still exists in labs where the negative side of science – that working to make weapons to kill more people rather than the good side of it working to better understand the world and save lives – can use it to develop biological WMDs.
Not knocking the scientists working on the “flu cure” vaccine – which btw. I think we keep hearing every so often & will believe when I see it.
Just a cautionary note to remind us science is a double edged sword. Use it wisely?
Can we? Given human history & nature with examples of us “choosing” (or having imposed) choices that led to things like the A-bomb being used against Hiroshima & Nagasaki, given DDT & CFC’s, given our potential for making ever worse and more leathal Weapons of Mass Destructions?
I hope we can. But I am not all that optimistic. Don’t be too quick to knock religion. Science does need ethics applied to its operations otherwise we are indeed, as the BA would say, DOOMED!
March 29th, 2009 at 9:41 pm
Hi All… I am hoping someone can “educate me” on this…I am not one of the antivaxers per say however I am weary of things that come up as the take this vaccine and it will cure all hype…I get a flu shot every year and knock on wood…no flu however I remember a time in the 50’s and 60’s where women were given shots for (and forgive me I think it was a worry of DDT) I’m not sure and then there was an issue of birth defects, infertility etc associated with it..now I know that science has advanced since then and it is “safer” now than before…but I always have to double check via internet or health Canada (yes I am an Canadian) before I would ever take a vaccination like that. I become a medical researcher to investigate everything before I even say..ok I’m ready for my shot.
Again..I’m not an antivaxer by any means…just a little precarious. Any reply is welcomed.
Thanks for reading
Phoenix
March 29th, 2009 at 9:52 pm
Thank GOD that the flu virus was so intelligently designed as to give man a chance to develop a vaccine against it.
It truly is a miracle!
.
.
.
.
JUST KIDDING!
This is really exciting news! Thank you, science!
March 29th, 2009 at 10:04 pm
Erwin is of course right on the major causes of the end of WWI: the Spanish flu had nothing to do with it. Lots of otherwise healthy people being housed in close proximity after the war certainly is one of the causes why that strain of flu killed so many healthy people (unlike most strains).
March 30th, 2009 at 1:18 am
@Salaam Shalom Peace:
Military research isn’t automatically unethical.
Personally, I think that folks like Barnes Wallis and others who developed the weaponry that helped take down Nazi Germany were nothing short of heroes. And if it wasn’t for Richard Feynman and the rest of the guys who worked on the Manhattan Project, my grandfather would quite likely have died before he had the chance to help create my dad (grandad had the spectacular misfortune of being a veteran of both the siege of Tobruk and the battle for the Kokoda track).
Yes, being in a city that gets nuked is a bloody horrible thing to have happen to you. But I don’t think that being killed by a nuke is really any worse than being killed by a bullet in the guts (as nearly happened to my grandfather; he got the bullet, but he thankfully survived), or dying from dysentery because conventional bombs have destroyed the sewerage systems.
It’s worth remembering that we haven’t had a world war for sixty years now; I don’t think that would have been the case if it wasn’t for the Manhattan Project. I suspect that a lot of the anti-nuke campaigners have forgotten just how horrible “conventional” war can be. Even if you take all of the nukes and germs and gases out of the equation, another global-scale industrialised war could quite possibly wipe us out. A handful of large modern FAE bombs can annihilate a city just as effectively as Little Boy did.
Mutually Assured Destruction is a crazy idea (as the acronym implies), but it does seem to work. Humanity has become too good at large-scale industrialised warfare to be allowed to do it anymore, and unfortunately it seems that the only effective way of stopping us from doing it occasionally is to hold a gun to the head of humanity in general.
March 30th, 2009 at 3:57 am
The White Phoenix, you are probably thinking of the sedative thalidomide which was given to women to help with morning sickness. The problem with thalidomide was that it hadn’t tested been well enough as they had tested it on rodents which metabolised it differently to humans and so the developmental defects it had in humans didn’t show up. When it was later tested on rabbits and monkeys it displayed the same developmental defects seen in humans.
The real problem with thalidomide was that in the 1950s the level of testing required was far far lower than that mandated by law in most countries today. In fact, back then, many countries didn’t even require a drug’s test results be submitted to the appropriate government agency, assuming they even had an appropriate agency. However, as it happens, thalidomide might now be making a comeback due to its possible advantages in helping deal with a range of conditions from Leprosy to cancer to HIV/AIDS.
March 30th, 2009 at 10:48 am
If only they made a vaccine to cure teh stoopid then we’d really be set!
March 30th, 2009 at 1:44 pm
Is this not the opening of “My Name is Legend”???
March 30th, 2009 at 2:10 pm
The wrong headed and un-scientific banning of DDT, has resulted in the deaths of millions of people worldwide. I hope the Woo woos can’t sleep at night.
March 31st, 2009 at 5:17 am
@ Thomas Wentzel :
They probabaly can’t, but sadly not for the reasons you’re thinking …They’re just too worried about their tinfoil hats falling off & they have to keep looking out for those invisible black govt helicopters, anatartican nazis and repltileans from Zeta Reticuli & oh yes, the boogie monster under the bed and the fairies at the bottomof their gardens.
The sh.. shi .. shi … stuff ppl will actually believe is just .. well funny if it weren’t so sad and sad if it weren’t so funny.
March 31st, 2009 at 8:28 am
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March 31st, 2009 at 9:12 am
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March 31st, 2009 at 11:50 am
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March 31st, 2009 at 11:56 am
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