Innovation in flu vaccines

Global flu pandemics are part of our world’s history and will likely be a part of our future until we develop vaccine solutions that enable the production of influenza vaccines in real time. In today’s mobile and globalized world, a pandemic could move across borders even faster than in previous pandemics, and a highly virulent strain could cause substantial disease and death.

For example, the current outbreak of the influenza A(H1N1) virus has spread around the world and could still pose a serious threat to public health. In response, the World Health Organization has elevated the pandemic alert level from 5 to 6, which is an indication of the spread of the disease, not severity, and has requested that governments continue with surveillance activities and with implementing pandemic plans.

Additionally, the avian flu virus has killed millions of birds and has spread from birds to humans, killing more than 250 people. Fortunately this virus does not spread easily from person to person. Public health leaders are following the virus closely to see if it will evolve into a form that spreads efficiently from human to human, causing a global pandemic. PATH is working to help prepare for a future global outbreak, however it may emerge.

An ironic challenge

Past experience shows that high-resource countries may experience mild disease from influenza, but more severe disease may occur, with higher mortality, in developing countries. Further, in the developing world, access to care may be limited, flu can be year-round, and tight living conditions make people especially susceptible. But most of the efforts to prepare for a pandemic are concentrated in high-resource countries.

Finding a solution

Vaccines—rapidly developed, produced, and distributed—could save millions of lives during a flu pandemic. Today, most influenza vaccines are egg-based and difficult to produce quickly and in large quantity. Through partnerships with public- and private-sector organizations, PATH is supporting the development of promising new vaccines against pandemic influenza. Our goal is to develop vaccines that can be accessible and affordable to people in low-resource countries. Our efforts are primarily focused on newer technologies that are in early stages of development that could benefit real-time response in a future pandemic.

We believe that live attenuated vaccines made from weakened influenza virus are particularly promising due to their potential to be produced cheaply, quickly, and in large quantities. In addition, we’re looking to apply recombinant technologies to produce pandemic influenza vaccines that can be manufactured more efficiently than conventional influenza vaccines. We’re also exploring new vaccine additives, or adjuvants, that could improve the immune response and conserve doses by reducing the amount of antigen needed to make the vaccine effective.

New options for influenza vaccine development are an important component of pandemic preparedness for both poor countries and the world community.

Photo: David Jacobs.