New mRNA vaccine targeting all known flu strains shows early promise Research still in animal trials, but it lifts potential of mRNA technology to new heights A new mRNA vaccine targeting all known flu strains in a single shot is showing early promise in animal studies and is opening the door to a wide range of possibilities with the vaccine technology — including potentially preventing the next influenza pandemic."Our approach was to make a vaccine that encoded every influenza subtype and lineage that we know about," said Scott Hensley, an immunologist at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and one of the lead authors of the study.Unlike seasonal flu shots that protect against existing circulating strains each year but offer little protection against strains that can spill over from animals and spark pandemics, like H1N1 in 2009, this shot could theoretically provide immunity against all new flu strains.While a potential vaccine could be years away since it still needs to successfully undergo human trials, developing a flu shot that can target all 20 known influenza A and B strains is an astonishing scientific feat."It really shows that we can use mRNA vaccines in ways that we really hadn't thought of before," said Alyson Kelvin, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan's Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization who co-wrote an independent perspective on the study in Science."