New research may pave the way to rid the world of the flu forever.<\/p>\n

Every year, billions of doses of flu vaccine are administered to people around the world. But by the following year, the virus has mutated, and we need to create another vaccine to deal with the new strain.<\/p>\n

New research by Tijana Ivanovic, assistant professor of biochemistry at Brandeis University, and several colleagues suggests the flu virus may owe its persistence at least in part to string-shaped structures called filamentous particles.<\/p>\n

Ivanovic believes that developing an antiviral<\/a> treatment to target these particles could help rid the world of flu for good.<\/p>\n

The research appears in Nature Microbiology<\/em><\/a>. The findings also apply to emerging viruses, such as avian flu and Ebola, but not to COVID-19, which has a different structure.<\/p>\n

Researchers first discovered filamentous virus particles in 1946. They were shown to exist side-by-side with another type of viral particle that was sphere-shaped.<\/p>\n

But when scientists cultured the flu virus in their labs, observing it undergo several replication cycles, the filamentous particles disappeared from view.<\/p>\n

“This is what made it so difficult to dissect their function,” Ivanovic says. “They were elusive, so impossible to study.”<\/p>\n

The researchers used a unique method to study the flu virus. It involves producing virus particles in the lab, observing them using a technique called total internal reflection fluorescence microscopy (TIRFM), and conducting computer simulations.<\/p>\n

Ivanovic says her approach results in a more accurate and detailed account of the flu virus’s behavior than the methods used by scientists in the past.<\/p>\n

Her method led to the following picture of spherical and filamentous particles:<\/p>\n