Synthetic Universal Flu Vaccine

Abstract Type A and B Influenza viruses cause severe seasonal epidemics and less frequent but more deadly pandemic infectionsVaccination provides the best protectionalthough serious problems are confronting the global Influenza marketVirus diversity and mutation rates necessitate the annual production of hundreds of millions of vaccines using antiquated egg based technologiesCompounding this is the risk of choosing the wrong vaccine strainwhich leads to sharp drops in efficacy and increased infection ratesNew transformational technologies are needed to combat InfluenzaThe best solution is a universal vaccine that will establish longterm immunity against all genetic strainsThis can only be accomplished by constructing vaccines around highly conserved protein sequences common to all virusesImportantlythese antigens are known and numerous studies indicate that vaccines targeting linear epitopes withinviral proteins can be used to induce protective antibodies against both Type A and Type B virusesTRIA Bioscience is developing a self assembling peptide nanoparticle vaccine platform that incorporates these and similar linear B cell epitopes directly into synthetic peptides capable of stimulating significant functional antibody responsesThe ease of production and formulation of such peptides makes this an ideal technology for mass productionWe propose to build a multivalent universal Influenza vaccine that targets these highly conserved epitopes and confers long lived immunity against multiple Influenza classes and strainsMice will be immunized with individual peptides to confirm that each epitope induces an antiviral antibody responseThe relative potency of each vaccine will be evaluated in mouse challenge studies and multivalent formulations will tested for improved protection against Influenza A and B viruses Narrative Influenza infection is an acute global health issue and new technologies are needed that can maximize vaccine immunogenicity and ease manufacturing constraintsTRIA Biosciences is developing a multivalent universal Flu vaccine using synthetic peptides