Pathfinder
Editor, Senior Moderator
The Canadian PressMay 9, 2013 19:46
Canada not planning H7N9 bird flu vaccine studies; will watch US results: PHAC
TORONTO - Canada currently has no plans to ask its pandemic flu vaccine manufacturers to make trial batches of vaccine to protect against the new H7N9 bird flu, senior officials of the Public Health Agency of Canada have revealed.
While the U.S. government has said it will ask several of flu vaccine manufacturers to start growing up batches of serum against the new virus this summer, Canada will watch, wait and learn from the work the U.S. does, the officials said in an interview with The Canadian Press.
"What we need to do in the international research-scientific community, the public health community is to complement each other. If the U.S. is doing something, we don't need to do it necessarily," explained Dr. Frank Plummer, head of the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg.
Dr. John Spika, director general of the public health agency's center for immunization and respiratory infectious diseases, said doing this early work is more crucial for the United States, which will have to make a decision about whether to use an adjuvant with H7N9 vaccine, if the virus causes a pandemic. An adjuvant is a product that boosts the immune response to a vaccine, typically allowing a smaller dose to have a protective effect.
The U.S. has not used adjuvants with flu vaccine before, but Canada used adjuvanted vaccine during the 2009 pandemic. And when the federal government signed new pandemic vaccine contracts in 2011, it stipulated it wants adjuvanted vaccine the next time it needs pandemic vaccine.
"So this step of doing some early clinical trials looking at immunogenicity is really going to be critical for the U.S. go-forward process. Whereas here in Canada, we've already made a decision on what kind of vaccine we're going to use. It's going to be an adjuvanted one," Spika said.
Read more...
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/...ning-h7n9-bird-flu-vaccine-studies-will-watch
Canada not planning H7N9 bird flu vaccine studies; will watch US results: PHAC
TORONTO - Canada currently has no plans to ask its pandemic flu vaccine manufacturers to make trial batches of vaccine to protect against the new H7N9 bird flu, senior officials of the Public Health Agency of Canada have revealed.
While the U.S. government has said it will ask several of flu vaccine manufacturers to start growing up batches of serum against the new virus this summer, Canada will watch, wait and learn from the work the U.S. does, the officials said in an interview with The Canadian Press.
"What we need to do in the international research-scientific community, the public health community is to complement each other. If the U.S. is doing something, we don't need to do it necessarily," explained Dr. Frank Plummer, head of the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg.
Dr. John Spika, director general of the public health agency's center for immunization and respiratory infectious diseases, said doing this early work is more crucial for the United States, which will have to make a decision about whether to use an adjuvant with H7N9 vaccine, if the virus causes a pandemic. An adjuvant is a product that boosts the immune response to a vaccine, typically allowing a smaller dose to have a protective effect.
The U.S. has not used adjuvants with flu vaccine before, but Canada used adjuvanted vaccine during the 2009 pandemic. And when the federal government signed new pandemic vaccine contracts in 2011, it stipulated it wants adjuvanted vaccine the next time it needs pandemic vaccine.
"So this step of doing some early clinical trials looking at immunogenicity is really going to be critical for the U.S. go-forward process. Whereas here in Canada, we've already made a decision on what kind of vaccine we're going to use. It's going to be an adjuvanted one," Spika said.
Read more...
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/...ning-h7n9-bird-flu-vaccine-studies-will-watch
