A universal flu vaccine.

Influenza is a global health concern. The single most effective way of protecting people against influenza infection and disease is vaccination. However, currently available vaccines against influenza induce only strain-specific immunity, and do not elicit long-lasting serum antibody titers. Therefore, they are ineffective in the case of possible pandemics. There is an urgent need for a new generation vaccine which would induce broad and long-lasting immune protection against antigenically distinct flu viruses. The paper presents recent achievements and the challenges in the field of universal vaccine construction.