Super-Vaccine For Flu In Development 165
Adam9 tipped us to a DailyMail article about the possibility of a revolutionary flu vaccine that could work against all strains of the Influenza A disease. This 'holy grail' of vaccines would work on everything from the annual 'winter flu' to the 'bird flu'. The best part is that just a few vaccinations may provide complete immunity, unlike the annual boosters are current defenses require. From the article: "The new jabs would be grown in huge vats of bacterial 'soup', with just two pints of liquid providing 10,000 doses of vaccine. Current flu vaccines focus on two proteins on the surface of the virus. However, these constantly mutate in a bid to fool the immune system, making it impossible for vaccine manufacturers to keep up with the creation of each new strain. The universal vaccines focus on a different protein called M2, which has barely changed during the last 100 years."
Re:Do fix-alls really exist? (Score:2, Informative)
Auto makers tried the Made-To-Rattle approach in the 1970's and nearly got wiped out. The Japanese realized that there are quite a lot of people to sell to ONCE, and selling their cars once was better than Detroit not selling anything at all.
The "Temporary Patch" mentality is the kind of thing people can trick themselves into from desperation. One of my old professors once said, "Suppose your customer wants to spend $100,000 with you. You get better results if you pass on cost savings; last year's $100,000 audit can be delivered this year for $75,000. But your customer "wants" to spend the same budget they always had - so just sell them some exciting new services."
Occasionally greedy companies can act to block something "too good", but nimble smaller groups by concept have to stake their claim at being better than the behemoth.
To reel this into SlashDot, If I'm gonna have you as an IT guy, quit patching my Windows box. Convert me to Linux. : ) And tell Tux to stop glaring at me.
It's in the Mail, it's almost certainly snake oil (Score:5, Informative)
Claims on Effectiveness (Score:3, Informative)
The main question that comes to my mind is how they can claim that this vaccine will require only a booster shot every 10 years. The drug rimantadine is believed to act by inhibiting the M2 ion channel - however, drug resistance can develop if the M2 gene has a chance to mutate. Presumably, mutations that render "anti-M2" vaccines ineffective are also possible, perhaps not necessarily in the same range of probability (one could argue that mutations are far less likely when the virus is faced with the immune system versus a drug). However - especially at the population level - could placing selective pressure onto the M2 gene lead to resistance faster than the company anticipates? I suppose time (and human trials!) will tell
Flu Virus Proteins (Score:5, Informative)
M2 happens to be an ion channel protein for the flu virus, which is also necessary for propagation of the virus (it's thought to be involved breaking down the virus protein coat once inside the host cell, freeing the genetic material to be replicated). As the article notes, it tends to be more conserved than H and N- there may be a severe disadvantage for a flu virus to have a mutant strain of M2.
What the article does not mention, however, is that there are a couple of antiviral drugs already available which target M2. Amantidine [wikipedia.org] and rimantidine [wikipedia.org] both are thought to interfere with M2, and are already administered as antivirals against flu. (Curiously enough, they started as Parkinson's treatments- it was discovered patients taking them had serendipitous flu resistance). While a vaccine meant to target M2 might work differently than the adamantane-based antiviral drugs, it's worth noting that influenza, and H5N1 flu at that, resistant to those drugs is already quite common throughout Southeast Asia.
Re:Is a cure enough? (Score:5, Informative)
Umm, where did you get THAT little snippet of misinformation?
TB is not totally curable - in fact we are seeing a huge increase in multi-resistant strains of this bacillus. You have to take up to 6 different antibiotics (rifampin, isoniazid, ethambutol, pyrazinamide, streptomycin and pyridoxine) and supplements during up to 6 months or more. There is poor compliance with the treatment, which makes this a disease that is very hard to cure. I would also argue that although TB and its complications might directly kill more people (the death rates are similar in the US, 0.6 per 100,000 for TB and 0,4 per 100,000 for influenza), the consequences of influenza - especially in the elderly, are usually devastating for quality of life and prognosis purposes.
Smallpox etc seems to have been handled pretty well, yet TB
Also I must point out that smallpox is caused by a virus, while TB is a very slow growing bacterium. Not the same critter at all.
Re:Eugenics (Score:2, Informative)
Vaporware?? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Is a cure enough? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:unchanged protein (Score:5, Informative)
There's no such thing in nature. Proteins don't "decide" to evolve, and DNA doesn't "decide" to mutate. All evolution happens because of random mutations in DNA -- random in terms of where the mutation is, what the mutation does, and when the mutation occurs -- followed by the proliferation (or not) of that mutation due to natural selection.
(There are some minor exceptions to the randomness of mutation, such as alternative mRNA splicing [wikipedia.org] and certain regions of DNA that trip up the replication process, but they can be ignored for this discussion.)
In the case of influenza [wikipedia.org], mutations happen at an extremely rapid rate: the influenza genome is made of single-stranded RNA (no backup copy) and is copied by a viral transcriptase without the aid of any proofreading enzymes (no verification happens when copies are made). This means that the average mutation rate is roughly 1 per virus, on average. That's an insane mutation rate -- moreso since the genome of any RNA virus is almost 100% genes -- and it only works because influenza creates so many copies of itself in each infected cell.
Now, not knowing anything about the M2 protein's history except for what's in the article, the fact that the M2 protein has remained nearly the same for the last 100 years -- despite all these rapid mutations -- means that the dominant M2 protein is being strongly selected for. That means that viruses with a different M2 don't spread very well, as compared to viruses with the most popular M2. This suggests that, even if a newer vaccine causes the immune system to target only the currently popular M2, the viruses that escape the vaccine will be less effective than any influenza strain of the last 100 years.
(Of course, "worse for influenza" doesn't necessarily equate to "better for humans". It could be that the reason the current M2 is so popular is that it doesn't kill as many human hosts as the older M2s, which benefits both humans and influenza. But, given what the Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org] says about M2's function, the smart money is that switching to the older M2 will impede the virus's ability to infect a cell, which is a win for humans.)
Re:correlation != causation (Score:2, Informative)
From La Leche League's website: Breastfeeding has been shown to be protective against many illnesses, including painful ear infections, upper and lower respiratory ailments, allergies, intestinal disorders, colds, viruses, staph, strep and e coli infections, diabetes, juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, many childhood cancers, meningitis, pneumonia, urinary tract infections, salmonella, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome(SIDS) as well as lifetime protection from Crohn's Disease, ulcerative colitis, some lymphomas, insulin dependent diabetes, and for girls, breast and ovarian cancer.
Re:They did have a cure for flu (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Is a cure enough? (Score:4, Informative)
All that said, there are several new vaccines undergoing trials right now, so hopefully one will be more effective in adults.