Treatment for bird flu succeeds in mice
Brid Flu
taken from humans could provide protection from lethal strains of influenza, including the bird flu and the 1918 Spanish flu strain, according to research published this week.
has yet to be tested on humans, but scientists expressed optimism in using antibodies to defend against various types of the flu. Antibodies are proteins that the immune system produces to fight harmful substances in the body.
The research, funded by National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was conducted on mice and cell cultures. The findings appear online this week in Nature Structural & Molecular Biology.
Scientists from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, Massachusetts, the Burnham Institute for Medical Research in La Jolla, California, and the CDC collaborated on the research.
“We pooled our distinct expertise to isolate and characterize a novel family of human antibodies,” said Robert Liddington, director of the Infectious Disease Program at the Burnham Institute. “We were surprised and actually delighted to find that these antibodies actually neutralized a majority of other influenza viruses, including most of the regular, seasonal flus.”
If the antibodies are tested to be safe and effective, it could take several years to develop a licensed product, according to a press release from the National Institutes of Health.
“These are fully human monoclonal antibodies — no further engineering has to be done,” Marasco said. “The antibodies we characterize in our published works are molecules to go into clinical trials and hopefully one day, will be approved for into human treatment.”
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