Virtual patients develop flu vaccine – Science & Technology

(ANSA) Rome – A new frontier in developing a universal flu vaccine using a digital twin of the human immune system is possible, thanks to a virtual patient developed by Italy’s University of Catania.
This study, coordinated by Francesco Pappalardo of the University of Catania and carried out within the framework of the activities carried out by the ICSC National Center Spoke 8 “Computational Medicine and Omic Data” and published in the journal Bmc Bionformatics, demonstrates its feasibility .
“The UISS is a digital model of the human immune system that can be created based on data from each specific individual,” Pappalardo, an expert in computational biomedicine and co-director of ICSC Spoke 8, told ANSA.
Uiss, short for Universal Immune System Simulator, is a state-of-the-art digital twin, a perfect virtual replica of the human immune system that aims to open the door to so-called personalized medicine, based on the development of drugs and medicines adapted to specific circumstances. therapy. specific patient.
After receiving support from the European Medicines Agency (EMA) for tuberculosis research in January, Catania researchers now aim to obtain UISS validation for influenza vaccine research.
The study focused specifically on the H5N1 virus, the avian influenza virus, which could be very dangerous if human-to-human transmission occurs because it could trigger future epidemics.
Pappalardo said: “The purpose of selecting H5N1 was to construct a unique influenza vaccine and identify antigenic components common to all seasonal influenzas.” (ANSA).