A needle-free, DNA-based, vaccine against avian influenza strain H5N1 has been developed by UK company Powder Med Ltd and will soon enter clinical trials.
This new vaccine is based upon PowderMed’s proprietary system for delivering DNA
vaccines — it is a needle-free injection device that fires gold particles coated with DNA
(encoding genes specific to the flu strain) at supersonic speed into the immune cells of
the skin. This first-time-in-man clinical trial will examine the ability of a vaccine based
upon the Vietnam H5N1 avian influenza strain to protect against a potential pandemic
form of flu.
A previous study, conducted by PowderMed in the United States, demonstrated that this
vaccine technology was able to produce 100% protective immune responses in adult
volunteers to a vaccine which encoded an annual influenza strain
Of course, who’s to say H5N1 will be the cause of the imminent bird flu epidemic or indeed that any avian influenza strain will be the next big viral attack on the human race. There are also sorts of terrifying possibilities lying dormant in exotic hosts the world over…think SARS…think HIV…think ebola…
This is my report from the Royal Society on emerging viral infections