After a friend got quite ill with the flu *FROM* taking a flu shot this year, I got me to thinking about it.

As far as I know, flu is a virus (like HIV). I also believe that flu vaccine is currently created by taking the best estimate as to what the "strain of the year" will be, cultivating it, weakening it somehow, and then throwing it at us.

Assuming the two statements in the previous paragraph are correct (I'm willing to be corrected if they are not), my thinking was the following.

Does flu share with HIV the property that certain parts of it are immutable, while others mutate, thus generating the various strains we get each year?

If so, can we attack it in the same way as the intended solution for HIV, i.e. to generate a custom protein that triggers the immune system to generate antibodies for the immutable parts of the flu virus.

Doing so would have two advantages, as I see it. Firstly, we could use the same flu vaccine for all shots, thus removing the need to generate "per strain" vacines as we do now. Also, since it would not be a weakened form of the virus, it would be a lot safer for folks like my friend, or for me. I'm diabetic, so I have to live with a suppressed immune system. Think what this means in terms of even a weakened flu virus.

Just some food for thought .....

---

This would only work if there are immutable parts to the outer coating of the virus. Proteins hidden by the outer layer would not trigger the immune system.

In the case of HIV, it does seem that this is so, and hence the immunistaion strategy you mention (one of many approaches of course).

The starting point in applying the same strategy to the flu virus would be to find out whether there are any immutable outer proteins.

This is where my knowledge of facts runs out.

My guess would be that, because flu and the human immune system have been in an evolutionary "arms race" for longer than is the case with HIV, there would have been a proportionally greater chance that such an immutable outer protein would by now have been targeted by the immune system, and then hidden by the flu virus. So I would not be surprised to find that the answer would be no.

Just my two penn'orth. No doubt others know more...

River~~

---

This would only work if there are immutable parts to the outer coating of the virus. Proteins hidden by the outer layer would not trigger the immune system.

In the case of HIV, it does seem that this is so, and hence the immunistaion strategy you mention (one of many approaches of course).

The starting point in applying the same strategy to the flu virus would be to find out whether there are any immutable outer proteins.

This is where my knowledge of facts runs out.

My guess would be that, because flu and the human immune system have been in an evolutionary "arms race" for longer than is the case with HIV, there would have been a proportionally greater chance that such an immutable outer protein would by now have been targeted by the immune system, and then hidden by the flu virus. So I would not be surprised to find that the answer would be no.

Just my two penn'orth. No doubt others know more...

River~~

This is quite a coincidence--Bill Schief who is leading up our HIV vaccine design efforts and I were just discussing yesterday starting a project aimed at the influenza virus which would focus on presenting the only invariant part of the virus surface. We might be able to get going on this in the next couple of months.

---