When will a flu vaccine with messenger RNA be due?

CRH file.

–

(AFP)- The flu, with its fever, cough, and chills, reaches the northern hemisphere and, with it, the vaccination campaign. If so far vaccines against this virus, which mutates a lot, use a technology that is not totally effective, the use of messenger RNA could change the picture.

Increasingly laboratories launch into the development of vaccines against influenza virus using this new technology.

The French Sanofi, world leader in flu immunizers, has already begun its trials for a monovalent RNA vaccine – against a single strain of the virus – and will carry out trials with a quadrivalent vaccine next year.

The American Giant Pfizer made the first injections in September in humans with a flu immunizer with messenger RNA, a mechanism that he already uses in his drug against covid-19. The Moderna laboratory, also American, launched its tests in early July.

What are the benefits of this technology, so used against COVID-19 but which one has never been used for other viruses?

Vaccines against flu have been around for a long time, but their efficacy is relative: they use inactivated viruses, which have to be prepared well in advance, and whose efficacy levels vary between 40% and 60%, in some cases 70%.

“Six months before the epidemic, we evaluate the strains that circulate the most. Sometimes we make mistakes, and this creates a significant excess mortality ”, explains Claude-Agnès Reynaud, immunologist and director of research at the National Institute of Health and Medical Research (Inserm).

–