Nanoparticle Vaccine Technology Helps Boost Flu Cross-Protection and Improve Immune Responses, Giving New Approaches to Immunization

According to a study from the Institute for Biomedical Sciences at Georgia State University, nanoparticle vaccines can make significant cellular and mucosal immune reactions.

This means that protection against different kinds of flu virus is much greater.

Nanoparticle Vaccines Enhances Influenza Cross-Protection Through Cellular and Mucosal Immune Responses, Recent Study Finds — (Photo: Pixabay/WiR_Pixs)

Nanoparticles Make Vaccines More Effective

The study, published in the journal Nature Communications, provides useful information about how to make flu shots more effective by using personalized immunization methods. Epidemics and sometimes flu pandemics are bad for public health, so it's important to make vaccines work better across species.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends getting a seasonal flu shot yearly. These shots usually only protect against one type of flu for a short time.

These vaccines don't protect against random flu pandemics and only partially protect against different virus types. To get around these problems, the study stresses the importance of creating strong vaccine programs that protect against more influenza viruses.

The study's first author, Dr. Chunhong Dong, a postdoctoral fellow at Georgia State, stressed the importance of developing effective flu vaccines or vaccination strategies that could protect against different types of flu viruses and lower the health effects of flu.

New Approaches to Immunization

Researchers investigated how different vaccination methods affected female mice's immune systems when they were given mRNA lipid nanoparticle (LNP) and protein-based polyethyleneimine-HA/CpG (PHC) nanoparticle vaccines designed to target influenza hemagglutinin. The mice received intramuscular mRNA LNP or intranasal PHC vaccinations in a prime-plus-boost schedule. Multiple sequential immunization methods were used so that they could be compared side by side.

Dr. Baozhong Wang, the study's lead author and a distinguished university professor at Georgia State, talked about how their research had shown that cellular and mucosal immune responses were significant for protecting against influenza in different ways. He said that immunization with PHC through the nose worked better than immunization through the muscle to build up mucosal immunity and provide cross-protection. Furthermore, he pointed out that sequential mRNA LNP prime and sublingual PHC boost worked best against influenza strains undergoing antigen drift or shift.

The study shows that the order in which you get vaccinated is crucial because mRNA vaccine priming controls Th1/Th2 immune responses. The intranasal PHC boost is also important for boosting mucosal immunity, which makes the vaccine work better overall.

What This Means for Public Health

The results of this study are significant for public health, especially when it comes to making flu shots more effective and covering more areas. Researchers can make vaccines work better against a more comprehensive range of flu strains by combining different types of vaccines and delivery methods through heterologous sequential immunization.

Cross-protection from flu shots must be improved to mitigate the flu's huge harm to public health. Future flu outbreaks and pandemics might not be as bad now that researchers have found a way to improve vaccines. Personalized vaccine plans can make flu shots work better, which will protect more people and improve public health as a whole.