Universal Flu Vaccine Which Ends The Need For Annual Injections Could Be Available Within Three Years.

Scientists from London-based biotech firm Seek have developed a vaccine known as FLU-v which works by protecting against non-mutating proteins which are common to all types of flu.

The current system involves people being vaccinated, either by injection or nasal spray, with three or four deactivated strains of flu virus identified each year as posing the highest risk by the World Health Organisation (WHO).

But it is often not possible to predict which strains will become dominant andin September the Department of Health was forced to admit that last year’s vaccine was effective for just one in three adults because of a mismatch in the formulation.

However FLU-v works by boosting the creation of a certain type of immune cell (T-cells) which kills the part of the virus which does not change. "The vaccine is made using chemistry, not cells, [so] it can be cheaply produced and stored indefinitely at room temperature. The hope is that it will confer many years of immunity from flu."