Universal flu vaccine could end need for annual injections

A universal flu vaccine which could end the need for annual injections could be available within three years.

Scientists from London-based biotech firm Seek have developed a vaccine known as FLU-v which works by protecting against non-mutating proteins which are common to all types of flu.

The current system involves people being vaccinated, either by injection or nasal spray, with three or four deactivated strains of flu virus identified each year as posing the highest risk by the World Health Organisation (WHO).

But it is often not possible to predict which strains will become dominant and in September the Department of Health was forced to admit that last year’s vaccine was effective for just one in three adults because of a mismatch in the formulation.

However FLU-v works by boosting the creation of a certain type of immune cell (T-cells) which kills the part of the virus which does not change.

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Washington (Niaid )has pledged £1 million to launch larger scale trials of the vaccine.

Olga Pleguezuelos, the lead immunologist at Seek, told the Sunday Times: "We are confident this will protect people from any new strain of flu and we are hoping it will be fast-tracked through the regulatory process.

"The vaccine is made using chemistry, not cells, [so] it can be cheaply produced and stored indefinitely at room temperature. The hope is that it will confer many years of immunity from flu."

Flu estimated to claim up to 12,000 lives in Britain every year.

The peer-reviewed results of a previous smaller trial were published earlier this year by Clinical and Vaccine Immunology journal.

Ed Schmidt, a spokesman for Unisec, said: "The preliminary results already indicate we get a much better response in humans to FLU-v than we get with seasonal flu vaccine."

John Oxford, professor of virology at Queen Mary University of London, who has collaborated on the FLU-v project, said: "It is very promising and we're keeping our fingers crossed.

"I'm delighted the Niaid is helping to finance it. Once we have established the general principal of this approach, we could use it against all sorts of other viruses that attack the respiratory system."

The work planned by Niaid will involve swabbing up to 100 volunteers with a highly infectious strain of flu virus. To assess its effectiveness, half will have been given FLU-v and the remainder a placebo.

Matthew Memoli, director of the clinical studies unit in Niaid's laboratory of infectious diseases, said: "The hope is that FLU-v will work very well. We have a vulnerable ageing population and international travel spreading disease like never before”