U.S researchers have reported a prospective new way to create vaccines that may even have the ability to act as a universal flu shot, according to BBC.

A study on animals concluded that a single shot could protect against multiple strains of the virus.

There is a new flu vaccine every year designed to fight whatever strain of the miserable illness is going around. Researchers now believe the key is to target what is the same about the strains instead of what is different. It's possible that in doing this the vaccine will target the virus' weak spots.

The current flu vaccines are grown in chicken eggs, they are then deactivated and injected into people so that their immune systems can learn to fight the virus.

The pharmaceutical company Sanofi has come up with a new technology to fuse the virus with transporter proteins that are found in human blood.

The vaccine will combine the spikes that stick out from the virus, which rarely differ between strains, with the protein in hopes of creating a shot that will protect against many types of the flu.

The vaccine was given to ferrets, which are susceptible to many of the same illnesses as humans. It was observed that the shot gave the ferrets immunity to many current strains of the virus and past ones that were circulating as far back as 1934.

The vaccine has not yet been tested on people, and even safety trials could still be a year away from becoming a reality.

"We think this is a step down the path towards a universal vaccine," Dr. Gary Nabel, the chief scientific officer at Sanofi, told the BBC. "It's not a universal vaccine yet. There's lots of research in the early phases and this looks as good as anything out there."

The virus spikes used in the vaccine are haemagglutinin, but there are many different forms of it that are seen in various strains, for example an H1 virus such as H1N1 (swine flu) could not have the same vaccine as an H7 virus like H7N9 (Chinese bird flu).

Since the vaccine can only target certain haemagglutinin Prof. Sarah Gilbert, who works on universal vaccines at Oxford University said, "It is an improvement on the current vaccine. It's not a 'universal vaccine' but it's definitely a step in the right direction."

There is also the concern that the flu virus could evolve and learn how to overcome the vaccine as it has done many times in the past.

"It is like squeezing a balloon," Dr. Nabel said. "You squish one place and another pops out. The viruses are very clever and under pressure they find a new way to escape."