Hope for flu vaccine

Mutation of virus reason behind worst outbreak on record

THE flu has mutated and it may no longer be a good match for the vaccine as Australia’s record-breaking flu season gets even worse.

It comes as a breakthrough by Australian researchers means the annual flu jab could one day be replaced with a more effective vaccine that lasts for five or 10 years or even a lifetime.

More than 120,000 Australians have been struck down by the flu so far this year with more than 220 killed by the virus.

Five times more people had caught the flu by July this year than during our worst ever outbreak in 2017.

Griffith University influenza expert Professor Paul van Buynder says one reason is that a key strain of the flu virus appears to have mutated.

World Health Organisation Influenza Centre spokeswoman Professor Kanta Subbarao whose laboratory tests samples of flu circulating in the community has confirmed testing shows the H3N2 strain of flu has mutated.

“We don’t know how much those molecular changes will affect how the vaccine protects,” she said.

It was a mutation in the H3N2 strain of flu that was behind the worst flu season on record in 2017 and the WHO lab says this appears to be the dominant strain of the flu circulating the community.

Researchers at the Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute have uncovered the key to developing a super vaccine that stimulates T cells in the immune system.

The current flu vaccine works by generating antibodies to specific strains of the flu virus but if the virus mutates it can be ineffective.

Professor Nicole La Gruta is investigating immunising people with a viral fragment to stimulate a T cell response.

Her research has discovered how these peptides are presented to the immune system, a key step in the development of a new vaccine.