# 1050
We get, it seems, news of some huge scientific breakthrough that will someday hopefully deliver us from the perils of a pandemic, about once a month. And as a big fan of scientific research, I'm always happy to hear we are making progress.
But there is a goodly gap between most of these discoveries and actually having a vaccine in hand that can fight a pandemic.
Scientists have apparently discovered a tiny mutation that makes one strain of the H1N1 virus more easily infect birds, and another one prefer humans. This same mutation apparently also works with the H5N1 virus.
Scientists then isolated an antibody that appears to neutralize both types of H5N1, the avian adapted one, and the human adapted version. This, they believe, could lead to a vaccine that can be produced in advance of a pandemic.
Here is how Reuters is reporting this story.
New vaccine may beat bird flu before it starts
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor
Thu 9 Aug 2007
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Researchers studying bird flu viruses said on Thursday they may have come up with a way to vaccinate people ahead of a feared influenza pandemic.
Experts have long said there is no way to vaccinate people against a new strain of influenza until that strain evolves. That could mean months or even years of disease and death before a vaccination campaign began.
But a team at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Maryland and the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta said they may have found a short-cut.
The vaccine might protect people against the mutation that would change the H5N1 avian flu virus from a germ affecting mostly birds to one that infects people easily, the NIAID's Dr. Gary Nabel and colleagues report in Friday's issue of the journal Science.
"What Dr. Nabel and his colleagues have discovered will help to prepare for a future threat," NIH Director Dr. Elias Zerhouni said in a statement.
Fascinating stuff.
Aside from the vaccine potential (which I'll get to shortly), what is interesting is they have apparently located a small mutation that would change the H5N1 virus into a more `human adapted' pathogen.
Why that little tidbit wasn't the thrust of the story is a bit of a mystery to me. Last year much was made of the inability of scientists to turn the H5N1 virus into a `human adapted' pathogen. It was supposed to be reassuring.
This report from July, 2006.
Bird Flu Virus May Need Significant Mutation for Human Pandemic
By John Lauerman
July 31 (Bloomberg) -- Scientists failed in multiple attempts to make a more contagious form of the H5N1 bird flu, suggesting the virus may have to undergo massive change to cause a human pandemic.
After mixing genes from human and bird influenzas in a way researchers have projected might lead to a pandemic, the virus remained hard to spread said researchers led by Taronna Maines, a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention scientist. The study was conducted on ferrets, which are at least as susceptible to flu as people, the scientists said in a report released today.
Now, according to today's story, scientists have found a `small mutation' that turns the H5N1 virus into a more `human adapted' virus (whatever that means). I feel like someone should be screaming `Stop the Presses!'.
Apparently, I'm alone in that.
Instead, the story concentrates on the implications for a `generic H5N1 vaccine'. But before we start the celebrations and begin dismantling our pandemic preparations, there is one small catch.
Assuming that these scientists have found an antigen that would work across a variety of H5N1 mutations, we would still need to manufacture and deliver a vaccine to billions of people.
I know, I know. I'm being a party pooper. But knowing how to create a `generic vaccine', and actually doing it in quantity are two different things.
Kudos to the scientists who have devised what may turn out to be a very clever way around the `we can't start making a vaccine until the pandemic starts' problem. If it really works, that is no small achievement.
But it doesn't really solve the problem. Our global manufacturing capacity for vaccine is very limited. Distribution is another bottleneck. It would take a commitment of billions of dollars, some serious global cooperation, and several years, to overcome those obstacles.
For this discovery to `beat bird flu before it starts', as the headline suggests, we'd need to produce, distribute, and administer billions of doses of this experimental vaccine around the world. And we'd have to have the political courage to administer the vaccine before a pandemic erupted.
The sad thing is, all of these things are doable. I just wonder if our government, or any other, will be willing to do them.
