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posted by CoolHand on Monday January 28 2019, @04:19PM   Printer-friendly
from the drugs-drugs-drugs dept.

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

New anti-influenza drugs

In a paper published today in the Journal of Immunology the team, led by LSTM's Professor Richard Pleass, show that by engineering a part of an antibody they can target the viral proteins that allow flu to mutate and become so deadly to humans.

[...] Professor Pleass explained: "Influenza vaccines have limited public health impact during pandemics, and current influenza vaccines are less efficacious than vaccines for many other infectious diseases. This is because influenza viruses that circulate in human and animal populations mutate two key viral surface proteins, haemagglutinin (HA) and neuraminidase (NA), thus allowing them to escape from protective antibodies produced through natural infection or vaccination"

Both HA and NA target a sugar called sialic acid, that is found in abundance on the receptors of cells lining the mammalian respiratory tract, which the virus uses to gain entry into the body. The sialic acid-binding contacts on HA and NA do not mutate readily, otherwise the virus would not be able to infect human cells.

The team has engineered antibody Fc fragments with enhanced sialic acid that target these conserved parts of both HA and NA, binding influenza viruses and thus blocking their interactions with human cells.

By targeting sialic acid, these engineered biologicals may also be useful in the control of other pathogens, such as group B streptococci, Streptococcus pneumoniae, Mycoplasma genitalium, and Newcastle Disease Virus.


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  • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday January 29 2019, @10:34PM (1 child)

    by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Tuesday January 29 2019, @10:34PM (#793804) Journal

    The risk is still far lower than the benefit overall, and I'm not just saying that as a restatement of "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few." Actually, I do wonder if the current vaccination schedule is the best we could be doing by our children, but vaccination itself is sound science. You're not old enough to remember polio. Neither am I, but I did the research, and don't EVER want to see anything like that happen again...

    --
    I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
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  • (Score: 2) by Entropy on Wednesday January 30 2019, @04:58PM

    by Entropy (4228) on Wednesday January 30 2019, @04:58PM (#794119)

    Many vaccines are great. Polio, MMR, smallpox, the list goes on. Flu vaccine? Total moneymaking scam that harms children.