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Scientists Report 'Big Leap Forward' In Bird Flu Vaccine

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The Associated Press

Published: June 12, 2008

The first experimental bird flu vaccine made from lab-grown cells instead of chicken eggs shows promise in blocking the highly lethal virus, scientists report.

The advance is good news not just for preparations in case of a pandemic, but also because it offers a way to make shots for seasonal flu much faster. That gives health officials crucial extra time to better match annual shots to the flu strains circulating.

It also would reduce dependence on the antiquated system of using millions of eggs to make flu vaccines and could cut production time about in half, to as little as 12 weeks, according to maker Baxter International Inc.

Results of midstage testing of the Baxter vaccine, Celvapan, showed two shots produced an immune response considered strong enough to protect 76 percent of healthy adults from both the H5N1 Vietnam strain it targets and the related Hong Kong strain; it appeared to protect 45 percent from a third, Indonesian strain.

"I think it is a big leap forward," said Wilbur Chen, a vaccine researcher at the University of Maryland School of Medicine not involved in the study.

Since the first outbreak in Hong Kong in 1997, more than 240 people in Asia, Europe and Africa have died from bird flu. Many experts believe a pandemic will eventually occur.

Other human vaccines - a few using cells or genetic engineering but most made from eggs - are being tested in dozens of government and commercial projects. Baxter officials say they expect to get a European Union license for Celvapan around year's end.

The results of the company-funded study were reported in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine.

A total of 275 volunteers in Austria and Singapore got one of four doses. The best results came from the second-lowest dose.

To measure effectiveness, volunteers' blood is tested to see how well the new antibodies they developed kill the virus.

William Schaffner, a Vanderbilt University infectious disease specialist, said researchers need to keep working but Baxter's got "pretty darn good results" at low doses.

"I'm excited about this, but we have not yet reached the finish line," he said.

In the United States, the Department of Health and Human Services has invested $1.5 billion in research on cell-based seasonal and pandemic flu vaccines.

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