Australia: 1000 volunteers to trial Flinders Medical Centre flu vaccine

[Shiloh]

Source: http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,23591592-2682,00.html

1000 volunteers to trial Flinders Medical Centre flu vaccine

April 24, 2008 11:50am

FLINDERS Medical Centre is to trial a new vaccine that could play a critical role in the event of a global influenza or bird flu epidemic.

The sugar-enhanced vaccine will be subjected to the world's largest ever single-centre trial, with 1000 people taking part.

The new vaccine already has been demonstrated to improve flu immunity in healthy people with the new trial to test if it improves immunity in the elderly and those with chronic disease.

"Although the vaccine is still in its trial stage, we believe it could be the world's best defence against an influenza or bird flu epidemic," said the South Australian Health Service chief investigator Dimitar Sajkov.

The new vaccine uses a natural sugar to boost its potency and researchers believing it to be 10 times more effective than vaccines currently available.

In the event of a pandemic it could allow health officials to stretch existing supplies to protect 10 times as many people as would be protected with a traditional vaccine.

"In a trial fo 200 health volunteers last year we were able to demonstrate that the enhanced vaccine was not only safe and well tolerated, but also very effective in terms of improving the ability of the vaccine to induce immunity towards the flu virus," said Flinders Medical Centre team leader Nikolai Petrovsky.

"Vaccination is the best way to prevent the spread of flu and the more effective we can make the vaccine the better."

The new trail will target four groups, people with chronic lung disease, with heart disease and with kidney disease and healthy people aged over 60.

 

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Re: Australia: 1000 volunteers to trial Flinders Medical Centre flu vaccine

Source: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23595632-5006787,00.html

Local team close to super flu vaccine
Pia Akerman | April 25, 2008

A FLU vaccine 10 times more effective than those now available, with the potential to drastically boost the supplies of vaccine available in case of a pandemic, is in the final stages of human testing in Adelaide.

The new vaccine uses a natural plant sugar to trigger signals within the immune system, forcing it to produce more antibodies in response to the vaccine's antigen.

Its creators believe it could bethe world's best defence against an influenza or bird flu epidemic as it is more effective and increases the supply of existing vaccines.

"If it works I think it certainly has the potential to revolutionise the approach to flu vaccinationsworldwide," said Nikolai Petrovsky, the director of diabetes and endocrinology who is leading the research at Flinders Medical Centre.

"Any technology that could stretch the manufacturing capacity would have an enormous impact. It would be very easy to implement and very cost-effective, and yet gives a dramatic boost to the effectiveness of existing vaccines."

Professor Petrovsky said the plant sugar worked similarly with other vaccines, and had already been shown to work in human trials on hepatitis B.

He hoped the new vaccine would be on the market within a few years, following a trial of 1000 volunteers at high risk of dying from flu - people with chronic lung disease, heart or kidney disease, diabetes and those over 60.

The study will be the largest single-centre trial of its type in the world, and follows testing on 200 healthy volunteers.

The Flinders research team is testing a vaccine against bird flu with the same technology, planning for initial clinical studies later this year or early next year.

The high doses of vaccine needed to protect from bird flu makes finding a way to stretch the existing supply of vaccine even more important.

"All the data would suggest it works just as well for bird flu as it does for the seasonal flu," Professor Petrovsky said.

"If you wanted to counter a flu pandemic globally, you're going to need six billion doses.

"In a best-case scenario, there's probably global capacity for a tiny fraction of that."

The new vaccine is the product of 10 years of research and screening of different compounds to find one that might improve the existing vaccine.

The plant sugar used comes from the daisy family and is also found in chicory and dahlias, and in lower concentrations in root vegetables.

Professor Petrovsky said the flu season was expected to be particularly bad this year, following an epidemic in the US with twice the normal level of deaths.

He urged people to consider vaccination.