SPEKE'S Chiron Vaccines plant is involved in a bid to find an anti-dote to the deadly chicken flu virus.

Earlier this year medical journal the Lancet warned that the flu poses a "massively frightening" potential threat to humanity.

At least five people in Vietnam are known to have died in the latest outbreak of the dangerous influenza carried by birds, which first emerged in Thailand last year.

Medical experts are worried that the flu could cross from animals to humans and lead to a pandemic which could kill millions.

The Lancet medical journal warned that standard vaccines would be useless against the virus if it started spreading through human communities.

Chiron is already the world's second biggest producer of flu vaccines for the UK and US markets, manufacturing millions of flu shots every year.

Officials there have confirmed that they are involved in a bid to find a "seed" of a vaccine to fight chicken flu which the Speke plant would be involved in making.

A Chiron spokesman said: "There are a number of groups who are working on producing the starting materials, or the seed, for the vaccine using a technique called reverse genetics.

"British company NIBSC are experts in this and we are involved with them and are talking to all of the parties."

He added: "It could take months to produce any vaccine but we are talking to people around the world about this.

"There is a whole series of meetings being held by people like the World Health Organisation and we are keeping a watch on the situation all the time.

"If there was a pandemic then, as a leading flu vaccine manufacturer, we would be involved," he added.

The last major world-scale disaster was the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918 which killed up to 40m people - more than the number killed in the World War I.

The Lancet added that influenza was more contagious than Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome and that it was unlikely to be controlled by quarantine measures effective against Sars.