Lab flu may not aid vaccines
Game-changing vaccine technologies are needed to strengthen global pandemic defences.
Butler D
Nature. 2012 Feb 8;482(7384):142-3. doi: 10.1038/482142a.
“Now that laboratory studies have yielded a glimpse of H5N1 flu viruses that might spread rapidly in humans and cause a devastating pandemic, vaccine makers will be better prepared if one develops. Or will they?
It is an appealing argument, and one that some scientists have made in recent weeks as controversy has swirled over two experiments that created H5N1 strains able to spread in mammals. But most experts contacted by Nature say that the work is unlikely to speed up the vaccine response in a pandemic. Jeremy Farrar, director of the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, calls such expectations “a red herring”.”
“But many agree with Richard Webby, a flu virologist at the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, who says, “I think the research is important, but not for vaccine purposes.””
“Nobody is going to ramp up production of a pre-pandemic vaccine based on these two experimental viruses,” says Webby. “That’s 100% sure.” Ab Osterhaus, a co-author on Fouchier’s paper also at Erasmus, agrees that industry will wait on the actual pandemic strain for any major roll-out, but says that screening for mutations could detect variants that could be used to make new seed strains, which might help with the initial response.”
“Bram Palache, the global government affairs director for vaccines at Abbott Biologicals in Weesp, the Netherlands, says that industry will not switch its limited plant capacity from making the seasonal flu vaccines to making a pandemic vaccine until a human pandemic has actually emerged and government orders are in hand. And once a pandemic is under way, neither industry nor governments will be content to use existing pre-pandemic vaccines — they will insist on one matched to the pandemic strain itself, says Palache.
Given the current technology and infrastructure, developing and manufacturing such a vaccine will take many months. Now that the mutant-flu studies have suggested that an H5N1 pandemic is a real possibility, health authorities should focus on shortening that timescale, says Farrar. He urges much greater investment in better and faster vaccine technologies, including universal flu vaccines — because H5N1 is far from the only possible pandemic strain.”
Making vaccines was one of the claims for doing GOF research work. The above comments are pretty clear. Move on.
