Not quite, unfortunately. Instead, researchers Maamary, Wang, Tan, Palese, and Ravetch have found a way to use already existing vaccines and make them more effective by increasing the strains the body responds to through the immune response. The difficulty with the common influenza vaccine is that the disease is highly mutatable, so a vaccine that successfully functions one year may not work the next. By “targeting the Fc receptor, CD23, during vaccination with existing influenza vaccines (TIV) to increase the breadth and potency of the antibody response,” existing vaccines wouldn’t become irrelevant, but rather an improved tool (Maamary et al).
I find this development extremely interesting! At least to me, it sometimes seems like we treat medicine as a magic external fix, rather than a tool that works in tandem with our bodies to protect us. This study, however, emphasizes using our natural bodily defenses to fight off disease. It also points out how little we still know about our body and the way it functions. Perhaps other diseases could be targeted using the body’s defense mechanisms, stimulated by vaccines or medicine. Overall, this is the most interesting vaccine study I’ve come across so far.
Works Cited
Maamary, J., Wang, T. T., Tan, G. S., Palese, P., & Ravetch, J. V. (2017). Increasing the breadth and potency of response to the seasonal influenza virus vaccine by immune complex immunization. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114(38), 10172-10177. doi:10.1073/pnas.1707950114
Vaccines Needed More Than Ever 