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Excerpt from cosmosmagazine.com
The US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has started enrolling volunteers at Duke University in North Carolina to test its experimental mRNA-LNP vaccine against seasonal influenza, one of several universal influenza vaccine candidates now in the pipeline. Another clinical trial has begun at the US National Institutes of Health’s Clinical Centre in Maryland.
Influenza kills up to 650,000 people around the world each year.
Ninety-nine percent of deaths in children under five years of age in developing countries are due to influenza-related infections, according to the World Health Organization.
The current crop of influenza vaccines has limitations in effectively combating the billion cases of seasonal influenza each year as they provide immunity against only one specific existing strain or mutation. The propensity of flu viruses to mutate into new strains means vaccines must be continuously monitored and reformulated each year.
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