Bird flu research promising

Pennsylvania researchers have produced a bird flu vaccine made from a genetically engineered human cold virus and shown that it protected 100 percent of vaccinated mice and chickens.

While production of a conventional flu vaccine requires months of work and large numbers of fertilized chicken eggs, the researchers reported Thursday that they prepared their vaccine in only 36 days, growing it in a laboratory dish.

The ability to produce a new vaccine so quickly could give public health officials a powerful new tool to combat the H5N1 bird flu virus if it should mutate and begin infecting humans widely.

The team is working with the Food and Drug Administration to begin human tests of the vaccine, said Dr. Andrea Gambotto of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, who led the team. He said those trials could begin within weeks.

He said the vaccine should be equally effective in humans because it is based on a human virus.

Gambotto’s research, conducted in conjunction with scientists from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is scheduled to be published in the Feb. 15 issue of the Journal of Virology and was made available early online.

So far, the bird flu virus has infected mostly birds, although 152 humans have contracted it and more than 80 have died, according to the World Health Organization. Experts fear, however, that the virus will mutate slightly, allowing it to infect humans more easily and leading to a pandemic.

The virus originated in southeast Asia but has now spread to other areas, including Turkey, Siberia and Kazakhstan.