A less fit flu virus

A team of researchers from the State University of New York at Stony Brook has used a computer-guided approach to engineer live attenuated influenza strains that protect mice from wild-type flu virus.¹ The researchers think the strategy could lead to quicker, more efficient ways of producing live attenuated influenza vaccines than the method used to generate strains for the one marketed product, the seasonal FluMist vaccine.

Traditional techniques for generating live attenuated viral strains rely on identifyingspontaneous mutations occurring in the viral genome. This typically involves extensive passage of the virus through cell or tissue culture under suboptimal conditions. The process can require months or even years to complete, and success is far from guaranteed-the result could be a strain that is neither genetically stable nor sufficiently attenuated for use in a human vaccine...