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Scientists Take Huge Step Toward Universal Flu Vaccine

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A universal flu vaccine — one that provides immunity against every strain of the influenza virus for multiple years — is the holy grail of flu research. It would be a medical breakthrough on the order of penicillin, with the potential to save hundreds of thousands of lives every year. And scientists just got one crucial step closer to making it a reality.

Two separate groups of scientists published papers this week demonstrating that a new type of flu vaccine can provide protection against multiple strains of the disease, rather than just one. Though a truly universal flu vaccine that could be given to humans remains years away, infectious disease experts hailed the new findings as a major breakthrough.

“These are very good papers. There are no problems with them,” Dr. Peter Palese, a renowned flu expert at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, told The Huffington Post. “What we need to do now is put [these vaccines] in humans and see if they work. That’s the only question at this point.” 

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!!!!!FluVirus1 Credit: Sebastian Kaulitzki/Getty Images         An illustration of the flu virus.

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/scientists-take-huge-step-toward-universal-flu-vaccine_55df5a8be4b0e7117ba93157

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HIV Prevention: Nobel Laureate David Baltimore Talks VIP, New Developments (VIDEO)

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Researchers may have discovered a way to protect against the transmission of HIV–a worldwide epidemic that now infects about 35 million people.

Nobel Laureate Dr. David Baltimore and colleagues at his Caltech lab are injecting mice with a powerful prophylaxis called VIP. And guess what? It works. Caltech postdoctoral fellow Alex Balazs is heading up this groundbreaking research. So is it now time to test this approach in humans?

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/14/hiv-prevention-david-baltimore_n_2435387.html?utm_hp_ref=science

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