A Universal Flu Vaccine Could Save Millions of Lives. Private and Public Funders Hope to Make it a Reality

Researchers have been developing a new generation of so-called “universal” flu vaccines with the ability not only to knock back one of humanity’s most serious and widespread health threats, but also to prevent the emergence of new global pandemics. Philanthropic support has played an important role in the enormous research effort required, but it’s going to be a long road.

Now that everyone is officially sick of novel and contagious respiratory illnesses, it’s worth noting that old-fashioned seasonal flu remains one of the world’s most serious public health burdens, responsible for an estimated 3 million to 5 million cases and some 290,000 to 650,000 deaths each year. While the burden is particularly heavy for low- and middle-income countries with lower rates of vaccination and other public health challenges, no nation is safe from the flu.

Lurking behind those numbers is flu’s capacity to become a global pandemic: Just over a century ago, the Spanish flu outbreak became the deadliest pandemic in modern history, killing as many as 50 million worldwide. Not only is there no reason a flu pandemic can’t happen again, but the connected nature of the planet makes it more likely. We’ve all seen how quickly a virus can spread and how difficult (or impossible) it is to contain a contagious respiratory virus once it gets into the community.

Unfortunately, the current state of flu vaccine production is, to quote a recent scientific paper, “archaic.” For example, public health officials must forecast months ahead of time which strains will be dominant each year to leave ample time for vaccine manufacturing and distribution, but that leaves plenty of opportunity for unpredicted changes in the circulation of strains, leading to the production of vaccines that don’t block the disease that emerges. Even if everything goes just right with epidemiological forecasts and vaccine production, and even if people get the shots—always a big “if,” no matter what country— the immunity induced by current flu vaccines lasts only a few months, allowing the disease a chance to continue spreading and infecting millions.

“Durable, universal vaccines that protect against all current and future strains of influenza and that are suitable for use in LMICs would be a game-changing public health breakthrough,” wrote authors of an article in the journal Vaccine, published in fall of 2021, titled “A research and development roadmap for influenza vaccines: Looking toward the future.” “As the COVID-19 experience has shown, delays in vaccine availability during a severe pandemic can have dire consequences.”

For all these reasons, an international collection of public health organizations, including the National Institutes of Health and philanthropic funders have stepped up efforts in recent years to develop a universal flu vaccine. Such a shot would be strongly protective against all current and future strains of flu, would not require super-cold or other exotic storage methods unavailable in many countries, and would need to be “durable”—that is, lasting for five to 10 years instead of mere months.

Developing a universal flu vaccine is a scientific challenge that’s going to require contributions and advances from many fields and specialties—that’s one reason it’s a cause well-suited to philanthropic support, which, at its best, can bridge multiple disciplines. Here’s a simplified explanation of part of the challenge: The flu virus has segments that mutate regularly, and segments that are more or less permanent. Current flu vaccines work by training our immune systems to recognize elements of the virus that mutate quickly. Researchers are now aiming to develop a vaccine that trains our immune systems to recognize parts of the virus that don’t mutate from flu strain to flu strain. Short answer: It’s not simple.

Among the philanthropies supporting the universal flu vaccine mission, not surprisingly, is the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. In 2018, the Gates Foundation announced that the search for a universal flu vaccine would be the topic of one of its Grand Challenges, a family of initiatives seeking to solve key global health and development problems. The next year, the foundation awarded $12 million in grants to several teams of researchers working on universal flu vaccine development.

Cari Tuna and Dustin Moskovitz’s Open Philanthropy has also contributed to universal flu vaccine development, including with a 2017 award of $11.3 million to researchers at the University of Washington. Open Philanthropy is an effective-altruism-oriented grantmaker that is one of the few funders that prioritizes biosecurity and pandemic preparedness.

In 2019, Wellcome committed funding to create a framework to coordinate the multidisciplinary, global effort by developing a roadmap for research and resource-sharing. The Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP), based at the University of Minnesota, was selected to coordinate the effort. The organization spent two years developing the roadmap, said Michael T. Osterholm, CIDRAP director, completing and publishing it just a few months ago. Next up for CIDRAP is a COVID-19 vaccine research roadmap.

“We’re set up now to act as air traffic control for development of a universal flu vaccine,” said Osterholm. Among other resources, CIDRAP is also providing a “technology landscape”—a database of novel universal flu vaccine candidates with the qualities of broader and more durable protection that public health officials seek.

In addition to Wellcome’s funding, additional philanthropic support for CIDRAP’s roadmap development came from the Gates Foundation, Global Funders Consortium for Universal Flu Vaccine Development, the Rockefeller Foundation, Sabin Vaccine Institute, Task Force for Global Health, and the World Health Organization. The Global Funders Consortium is an effort to bring together public health funders in support of the cause in order to accelerate progress. Members include the aforementioned private funders along with several public health agencies.

The knowledge likely to come out of universal flu vaccine research will undoubtedly lead to a wealth of insights into disease, biology, vaccines and the human immune system that extend well beyond the flu. And the focus on keeping people healthy is itself a game-changer, said Daniel Hoft, an influenza researcher at Saint Louis University School of Medicine.

“People don’t always appreciate how important it is from a public health standpoint to prevent disease rather than waiting until people get sick and coming up with cures,” Hoft said. “But the potential for vaccines is much greater.”

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