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Thursday, June 20, 2019
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Earlier this month, a
team of scientists published
a study in Nature Medi-
cine journal that could lead
researchers closer to a uni-
versal vaccine for influenza,
commonly known as the
flu. Principal investigators
include Aubree Gordon, Uni-
versity of Michigan assistant
professor of epidemiology at
the School of Public Health,
and Florian Krammer, pro-
fessor of microbiology at the
Icahn School of Medicine at
Mount Sinai.
Krammer said the team
found that a region of the
flu virus is conserved from
strain to strain that could
provide protection for the
human
immune
system.
The conserved region is
called the membrane proxi-
mal stalk and it’s part of the
hemagglutinin, which has
a head section that changes
frequently.
When stalk antibodies
bind to this region, the virus
is neutralized by blocking
fusion of viral and endosom-
al membranes, which inhib-
its development of the HA.
There are multiple mecha-
nisms involved in the path-
way and the researchers still
don’t know which mecha-
nism is most important for
protection in humans.
“The head changes all the
time. That’s why we have to
get the flu shot every year
because there’s so much
variation … That the anti-
bodies that recognize this
year’s flu shot usually don’t
recognize
next
year’s,”
Krammer said. “If you want
a vaccine that gives protec-
tion for a long time, you can’t
target the head, but target-
ing the stalk might be an
option.”
The eight-month obser-
vational study relied on
data from a cohort in Nica-
ragua. Krammer said the
lab developed specialized
assays, known as an inves-
tigative procedure, to con-
duct analysis of the samples
from the cohort. One of the
assays his lab used is called
an enzyme-linked immuno-
sorbent assay, which was a
binding assay used to deter-
mine antibody titers or con-
centrations.
Krammer said the bind-
ing assay could be done
quickly and easily standard-
ized, which could allow
studies in the future to use
the same assay.
In an email to The Daily,
Fatima Amanat, a graduate
student at ISMMS, one of
the researchers on the proj-
ect, said the team’s research
is important because the flu
is easily transmitted.
“Translational
research
is
extremely
essential,”
Amanat
said.
“Research
that allows us to take what
we learn from small ani-
mal
models
and
under-
stand immune response in
humans is very important
nowadays.”
Krammer said his study
could lead to a universal
flu vaccine—a vaccine that
could provide better and
longer-lasting
protection
against multiple subtypes
of the virus. The National
Institute of Allergy and
Infectious Diseases outlined
the importance of creating a
universal influenza vaccine
in a paper last July. Kram-
mer added the study was
partially funded by NIAID.
Amanat
agrees
with
Krammer and said the study
will provide an outline for
other scientists that plan to
test new vaccines.
“Influenza virus is a huge
public health burden and
despite having annual vac-
cination, influenza virus can
cause widespread disease,”
Amanat said. “It is great to
now finally have a vaccine
strategy in place that tar-
gets the stalk domain of HA
and provides protection in
humans.”
Krammer said another
benefit to a universal flu vac-
cine would mean greater
accessibility for a larger
group of people. He said
other diseases like measles
and smallpox have higher
vaccination rates than the
flu, with it becoming uni-
versal, this might lead more
people to consider vaccina-
tion.
“There’s people who are
really anti-vaccination and
I don’t think they’re easy to
convince to get vaccinated,”
Krammer said.
Read more at michigandaily.com
NEWS
The University of Michi-
gan Ford School of Public
Policy was the target of phish-
ing scams this past week after
Public Policy students, faculty
and staff received an email
last Tuesday from phishers
masquerading as staff mem-
bers inquiring about their
recipients’
schedule
avail-
ability.
In an email statement
to The Daily, Sol Bermann,
University
interim
chief
information security officer,
explained phishing is a phe-
nomenon that affects organi-
zations worldwide.
“Phishing
remains
the
most common method used
by cyber-criminals to get
unauthorized access to sys-
tems and data,” Bermann
wrote. “U-M, and organi-
zations the world over, are
constantly being plagued by
phishing attacks. There is no
technical way to stop them
all. Instead, we rely on the
University
community
to
understand how to identify
and avoid phishing at work
and in their personal lives.”
In an interview, Ber-
mann told The Daily while
Google’s barriers act as
the biggest defense against
phishing attempts, the Uni-
versity supplements such
systems with its own tools,
like a Chrome extension
built by Bermann’s team and
Information Assurance.
“We have a lot of threat
intelligence tools that feed
our network defenses, like
our firewall or intrusion
detection devices,” Bermann
said.
Bermann also said while
phishing
attempts
have
become sophisticated over the
years, they are not nuanced
enough to assume phishers
would specifically target the
Public Policy School or even
higher education institutions
as a whole. Part of the rea-
son, he explained, is because
they’re often sent by the mil-
lions.
He expressed his belief the
recent Public Policy School
phishing storm is part of such
a widespread attack.
“Those seem more of a
routine phishing attack, and
I don’t know that it’s just
attacking or just targeting
Ford,” Bermann noted.
So far this year, the Univer-
sity has released 26 phishing
alerts. One email imperson-
ated the University Library,
while another appeared to
be from University President
Mark Schlissel.
As far back as 2005, stu-
dents and staff fell victim to
phishing emails that asked
for their TCF Bank account
information.
There
have
been several more instances
reported over the years, such
as fake payroll emails in 2018
and spear phishing attacks
that targeted University staff
in 2013.
To
help
prevent
such
attacks, the University imple-
mented
Duo
Two-Factor
Authentication
early
last
year and has a section titled
“Phishing
and
Suspicious
Emails” on its Safe Comput-
ing website.
Ford School
responds to
latest phishing
scam at ‘U’
Professor leads study examining potential universal vaccination for influenza
Officials warn hisers pretend to be staff
members inquiring about student ability
Illustration by Kathryn Halverson
Read more at michigandaily.com
‘U’ researcher on team close
to discovering flu vaccine
KRYSTAL HUR
Daily Staff Reporter
MICHAL RUPRECHT
Daily Staff Reporter