THURSDAY, March 5 (HealthDay News) -- Boosting T-cell immunity may be one way to improve existing vaccines so that they can protect people during a bird flu pandemic, says an Australian study.
"The 'killer T-cell' is the hit-man of the immune system. It is able to locate and destroy virus-infected cells in our body, helping rid us of infections," the study's lead author, Stephen Turner, from the microbiology and immunology department at the University of Melbourne, said in a university news release.
"Unfortunately, current influenza vaccines are poor at inducing killer T-cell immunity," he said. "Therefore, we wanted to see if we could improve the current vaccine formulation to induce killer T-cells after vaccination."
Turner and his fellow researchers added a compound known to increase immunity to a flu vaccine.
"The addition of this compound promoted significant generation of potent killer T- cell immunity and provided protection from infection," he said. "The significance of these findings is that, rather than having to design a new vaccine altogether, we can improve current flu vaccines by adding this potent immune modulator."
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