"Towards A Universal Flu Vaccine" - Michael Eisenstein
Flu shots can be hard to sell to the public. Even a run-of-the-mill influenza infection can be debilitating to otherwise healthy people, and lethal to those who are elderly or frail, so vaccinations are important. The problem is that flu vaccines deliver inconsistent performance. Peter Palese, PhD, professor of microbiology, medicine, and infectious disease at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai believes that today’s flu vaccines come in for too much criticism. “They are fairly good vaccines but they’re not perfect.” He added, “The main problem, he adds, is that they elicit a focused immune response against a moving target.” According to Florian Krammer, PhD, professor of microbiology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, “If you then revaccinate with a vaccine that has the same stalk but a completely different head, the immune memory against the stalk could be boosted.”
— Peter Palese, PhD, Professor, Microbiology, Medicine, Infectious Disease, Chair, Microbiology, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
— Florian Krammer, PhD, Associate Professor, Microbiology, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
