Development of Universal Influenza Vaccine

Creative Biolabs has a strong vaccine development team that can design and develop vaccines for a variety of pathogens and diseases. The high variability of influenza viruses makes vaccine manufacturers must prepare and produce corresponding vaccines according to the epidemic strains recommended by WHO every year, which causes great inconvenience and costs for influenza vaccine development. Therefore, our experts are committed to developing universal influenza vaccines.

Starting Point for Universal Influenza Vaccine Development

Viruses can evade the immune system through a variety of mechanisms. For example, the F glycoprotein of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is in a metastable state before fusion with the host cell membrane, while the influenza virus generates sequence diversity for immune escape by antigenic drift of the main protein on the surface-hemagglutinin glycoprotein. Through analysis of the antibody-HA complexes, the researchers identified that the structure targeted by the broadly neutralizing antibodies of the influenza virus is located in the highly conserved stem domain of HA. Unlike HA's variable head domain, its stem domain is not only highly conserved but also evolves rather slowly. More importantly, the evolution of its HA's stem domain does not facilitate the immune escape of the virus. Therefore, the focus of the development of universal influenza vaccines is on the stem domain of HA.

Strategies for Developing Universal Influenza Vaccine

Realizing that the HA's stem domain is the binding region for broadly neutralizing antibodies, and that the HA's head domain appears to act as a decoy for the immune system, distracting its attention from the stem part. Researchers naturally came up with the idea of developing universal influenza vaccine composed of antigen that contains only the stem region of HA but not the head domain. Based on this strategy, Creative Biolabs' influenza vaccine team has put forward with many proven methods to achieve this goal based on their abundant experience.

• Headless-HA Immunogen

Removing the head domain in HA and retaining only the stem portion with its natural conformation encountered difficulties in practice. Based on our experience in the design of structure-based immunogens, we adopted the method of introducing the cityrosity (DT) crosslink. The stem domain is locked in its natural conformation before the fusion. Subsequently, a protease with a targeted cleavage site was used to excise the HA head. The results prove that the headless-HA antigen in this way can be produced in large quantities and can elicit antibodies specific to the stem domain.

• Chimeric HA

Combining the stem domain of one strain of influenza virus with the head domain of other different strains to construct chimeric HA has also proven to be a potential universal influenza vaccine strategy. Mice inoculated with chimeric HA were found to induce stem-specific antibody responses and the vaccine could provide protection against heterologous influenza virus challenge.

• Design of B-cell Ontogeny-based Immunogens
• Epitope Scaffolding
• Hyper-glycosylation to Mask Non-functional Epitopes or Domain

As the pioneer in vaccine development in the industry, Creative Biolabs holds world-class vaccine development team and has been serving customs all over the world from every aspect regarding of developing vaccines. We have multiple strategies that have been demonstrated to be practical and efficient in developing universal influenza vaccines. If you have needs in this regard, please contact us!

All of our products can only be used for research purposes. These vaccine ingredients CANNOT be used directly on humans or animals.