The mytical ‘universal influenza vaccine’ rears its head once again. I first became interested in influenza during graduate school in 2005. Human cases of avian influenza were being reported and the work on sequencing the 1918 pandemic strain had recently concluded. I remember some talk about a universal flu vaccine back then [1], but have never seen much concrete work [2]. For those not very familiar with influenza and the vaccine difficulties, this article represents an excellent primer.

Talk of a universal influenza vaccine likely goes back well beyond 2005; I’m not familiar with when such ideas were proposed. ↩
Admittedly, I don’t pay much attention to flu basic science research. ↩