Vaccines, Vol. 4, Pages 33: Inﬂuenza and Memory T Cells: How to Awake the Force

Research paper by Jan Spitaels, Kenny Roose, Xavier Saelens

Indexed on: 29 Oct '16Published on: 13 Oct '16Published in: Vaccines


Annual inﬂuenza vaccination is an effective way to prevent human inﬂuenza. Current vaccines are mainly focused on eliciting a strain-matched humoral immune response, requiring yearly updates, and do not provide protection for all vaccinated individuals. The past few years, the importance of cellular immunity, and especially memory T cells, in long-lived protection against inﬂuenza virus has become clear. To overcome the shortcomings of current inﬂuenza vaccines, eliciting both humoral and cellular immunity is imperative. Today, several new vaccines such as infection-permissive and recombinant T cell inducing vaccines, are being developed and show promising results. These vaccines will allow us to stay several steps ahead of the constantly evolving inﬂuenza virus.