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Australian researchers join global fight against bird flu

Nancy Notzon reported this story on Friday, February 1, 2013 12:34:00

EMILY BOURKE: The United Nations is urging governments around the world to keep up their guard when it comes to the bird flu virus amid fears that continued outbreaks in Asia and the Middle East could lead to a fresh pandemic.

Researchers in Newcastle are taking part in a global effort to develop a mass produced avian flu vaccine, and they're calling for volunteers, to take part in a human trial, as Nancy Notzon explains.

NANCY NOTZON: It's being called an insurance policy to protect the world.

Dr Marc Russo is the trial's principal investigator.

MARC RUSSO: The bird flu vaccine trial is a trial to determine what is the minimum dose of vaccine that is required to successfully produce an immune response that would be consistent with them being effectively vaccinated against the avian influenza.

NANCY NOTZON: His clinic in the New South Wales city of Newcastle is one of several from Australia, New Zealand, Thailand and the United States taking part in a global human vaccine trial.

The vaccine doesn't actually carry the virus, so apart from a few possible aches and pains, there's no risk of getting the disease.

MARC RUSSO: In Europe there are some licensed avian flu vaccines, but they're produced in the old fashioned way so there is very limited stock and it's in no way can ever be sufficient for providing global protection.

NANCY NOTZON: Traditionally, bird flu vaccines have been made using eggs, but the scientists say it's an inefficient method for mass production. Dr Russo and his team at Hunter Clinical Research hope by having an advanced vaccine made with cells, they can create global stocks if a pandemic were to ever hit.

MARC RUSSO: So, in order to produce global pandemic level stocks, they've developed a cell culture technique so that they're able to do it within a cell culture that doesn't mean they need an actual egg and then that can scale up significantly.

Even doing that, we still need to know what the amount of vaccine is required. So this study will be looking at two different doses and whether people need a booster dose or not at 12 months and from that we should be able to determine what people need and then that will be the amount that will go into the subsequent production.

NANCY NOTZON: To date, there have only been about 600 recorded cases of H5N1 infections, all of them overseas.

But when the worst outbreak happened in 2006, nearly 70 per cent of the 115 people reported infected with the virus died. Most of them were from Australia's close neighbour, Indonesia, where only 10 of the 55 people infected survived.

That high mortality rate has some worried, including the United States government who's funding the global project.

Dr Russo.

MARC RUSSO: The insurance policy is that should there be a mutation in the virus, and the virus does undergo regular mutation and that's evidenced by the normal non-H5N1 influenza, we have to keep adapting the new vaccine every year for the ordinary flu shot. If it does mutate and we get human to human transmission, then we would be looking at millions of infections and potentially a very large number of deaths.

NANCY NOTZON: There's not a lot of evidence the virus can yet be transmitted between humans, but there is concern that won't always be the case.

Professor Robert Booy is from the National Centre for Immunisation Research at Westmead Children's Hospital.

ROBERT BOOY: It's incredibly important to know that we have a vaccine against bird flu because it's the most deadly form of flu. Right now it doesn't transmit easily between humans but it's so close to that because of recent research showing that it might be possible for the bird flu to transmit easily between humans.

EMILY BOURKE: That's Robert Booy from the Westmead Children's Hospital. Nancy Notzon, the reporter.

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