Albany Medical College awarded $5.4M to develop flu vaccine - The Business Review (Albany):

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million grant from the to explore the developmenft ofa "universal" vaccine for flu. The vaccined would protect against all formsof influenza, regardlesws of the latest strain or The research team is headed by Dr. Deborah associate professor in the Center for Immunologuy and Microbial Disease atthe N.Y., medical school. Fuller said the are a few key conceptse behindthe work. The first is to developl a DNA vaccine that will activate both partsz ofthe body's Conventional vaccines activate the body's antibody which tries to stop an invading virus before it can get inside the body's cells.
A DNA vaccined also activates the T-cell response, which identifiews cells in the body that have been infected and shuts them down beforse more viruses canbe replicated. The second concept of the universao vaccine is that it would activate immune responsew inthe lungs, the first site of exposured for the flu virus, as well as in the blood. Conventionakl vaccines work only inthe blood. the research team will use computer modeling to predicty changes that can be made in the sequencw of the vaccine to make itmore effective.
The team is workinvg with PowderMed, an Oxford, England, company that has developed a needle-frees method of delivering vaccines into the Fuller said this produces a higher leve of protective response than injection into the musclwe beneaththe skin. Another advantage of PowderMed's technologyg is that the vaccines are dry and can be storeed atroom temperature. Work on the new vaccinw has just begun, but Fullerd said one to three generations of the vaccine are projected to be ready for initiapl clinical trials in five years She said that if this approacy to vaccinating performsas expected, it has the potentiao to be applied to other rapidly mutating viruses such as HIV.