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Universal vaccine could give us a world without the flu

Because flu viruses mutate so fast, the only way to stop them is to destroy their ability to evolve. That’s the key to creating a universal flu vaccine… and now we may have found the secret to creating one, and wiping out the flu.

There’s already a bunch of potential universal vaccines for a wide variety of flu strains in development, and a few have entered clinical trials. But one class of these so-called cross-protective vaccines could prove particularly powerful in going on the offensive against the flu. According to a team of Princeton researchers, the two crucial points are making the flu less severe once you’ve contracted it — which would greatly cut down on the contagiousness of the virus — and more importantly, targeting the parts of the virus that are the most unchanging and least adaptable. [Continue Reading…]