A vaccine against promising bird flu

The successful creation of an effective anti-H5N1 vaccine, along with the accumulation of antiviral drugs, is one of the priorities that all governments around the world wish for in the fight against pandemic influenza. hold.

The medical journal The Lancet published on February 2, 2006, on the prospective test of a H5N1 vaccine, the avian influenza virus reappeared in 1997 in Hong Kong and was the cause. causing current bird flu in Southeast Asia and Turkey.

Suryaprakask Sambhara, a researcher at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) of Atlanta and Suresh Mital of Purdue University (indiana state) announced that he has succeeded in developing an anti-pandemic vaccine. many separate strains of H5N1 in mice with genetic technology.

Avian flu vaccine produced by France.

The highly pathogenic avian influenza virus is responsible for about 152 human cases confirmed by controlled laboratories, with a fatality rate of more than 50% since 2004.

A genetic combination between avian and human viruses, or mutations of the H5N1 virus that causes outbreaks in current poultry can create a new strain of virus.

Such a virus is capable of transmitting between people and humans and causing a pandemic.

Dose re-compacted and dense

Currently, to keep the H5N1 virus alive, some vaccines have been developed but have shown little protection to the tested subjects: not only do these vaccines deliver small amounts of antibodies to the body. but even with repeated vaccinations and dense doses also yield modest results. Hon, it should only be considered that a pandemic vaccine is completely ineffective against future adaptive viruses.

Study of H5N1 virus in the laboratory (Photo from foreign website). An additional obstacle is often confronted with this kind of strategy to produce standard vaccines from inactivated viruses, which require chicken eggs with embryos as a medium for viruses to grow in numbers. But in the event of a pandemic, there must be immediate means to quickly protect 1.2 billion people. Scientist Suryaprakask Sambhara reminded: "Researchers estimate that it takes up to 4 billion eggs to be a virus culture medium and it takes about 6 months to produce a classic vaccine from eggs". This time limit will be reduced to less than a month with new technology to create genetic engineering vaccines.

Regular flu virus

US researchers have envisioned, created and developed genetically engineered technology that has been deactivated by the H5N1 virus and the hemagglutini H5 virus of Hong Kong. In reassessment, this vector virus has produced the correct H5 protein in human embryonic cells.

The 10-week-old experimental mice were given two vaccinations four weeks apart, or with experimental vaccines, or with a different vaccine that was previously tested on humans. To test the efficacy of the new product, groups of mice received 100 times the Hong Kong wild-type lethal dose for 4 weeks after vaccination.

Result: mice protected by the newly created vaccine compared more antibodies and the number of immune cells up to eight times more. All protected mice did not die when they were re-infected with the virus, including different strains of viruses.

Dr. Sambhara commented: "This approach is an effective form of vaccination strategy against existing high-disease viruses and new variants, as part of a pandemic preparedness program."