MELBOURNE, March 4 (UPI) -- Australian scientists say a bird flu vaccine is closer to reality thanks to their finding that boosting T-cell immunity can protect humans from the disease.
"The 'Killer T cell' is the hit-man of the immune system," said University of Melbourne Professor Stephen Turner, lead author of the research. "It is able to locate and destroy virus-infected cells in our body helping rid us of infection. Unfortunately, current influenza vaccines are poor at inducing killer T cell immunity. Therefore, we wanted to see if we could improve the current vaccine formulation to induce killer T cells after vaccination."
Turner said he and his team added a compound known to increase immunity to the flu vaccine in an animal model. The addition of that compound promoted significant generation of potent killer T cell immunity and provided protection from infection.
"The significance of these findings is that rather than having to design a new vaccine altogether, we can improve current flu vaccines by adding this potent immune modulator. With appropriate clinical testing, we could see improvements to current vaccines within the next five years."
The study is reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
