Recently, Prof. Si Longlong’s team from the Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences constructed a library of live-attenuated influenza A vaccines that utilize diverse E3 ubiquitin ligases to degrade viral proteins and achieve virus attenuation, and developed the next-generation proteolysis-targeting (PROTAR) strategy, PROTAR 2.0.

The studies were published in Nature Microbiology and Nature Chemical Biology, respectively, and expand on the PROTAR live attenuated vaccine technology that was initially introduced by the team’s study published in Nature Biotechnology in 2022.

To prevent influenza, vaccination is widely considered as the most effective way. Currently, the majority of licensed influenza vaccines are inactivated influenza vaccine (IIV) and cold-adapted live-attenuated influenza vaccine (CAIV). However, traditional vaccine strategies can result in the loss or incomplete matching of natural antigens from circulating influenza strains, potentially leading to reduced vaccine efficacy.