Rational Designs of Hemagglutinin Based Universal Influenza Vaccine

Thanh Van, Nhut Tran, Dong Nguyen, Khanh Nguyen, An Nguyen, Ly Le

School of Biotechnology, International University, National University of Ho Chi Minh city, Vietnam.

Author to whom correspondence should be addressed; email: ly.le@hcmiu.edu.vn

Abstract

Influenza virus has been one of the most major threats to public health. Though annual influenza vaccination is currently the most effective prevention strategy against flu epidemics and pandemics, the evolution of influenza virus can reduce the effectiveness of strain selected vaccine. For past decades, broad spectrum antibodies have been under thorough investigation to target different strains and subtypes of influenza virus for universal vaccine development. Specifically, universal influenza vaccines are designed to mimic those antibodies to target conserved regions of surface receptors to provide necessary preventive strategy against several influenza outbreaks. Even though influenza hemagglutinin HA is highly mutated protein, in our recent study, the (HA) receptor was found to have several evolutionary conserved domains among influenza viruses that can serve as the potential target for vaccine design. In this presentation, we report our results on the analysis of HA sequences and structures as well as address the potential binding mechanism of universal vaccine against influenza A virus.