# 538
Well, sorta.
This article is making the rounds of the news wires overnight.
HONG KONG : Researchers in the United States believe they have found an easily-produced vaccine for the killer H5N1 bird flu that could halt a feared pandemic, a media report said Monday.
Dr David Ho of the Aaron Diamond Aids Research Centre in New York says the vaccine would be "easy to produce, fast to produce and as broadly protective as possible", according to Hong Kong's South China Morning Post newspaper.
Ho spoke to the English-language daily during a lecture visit to Hong Kong, where the first human cases of H5N1 infection were recorded in 1997, when six people died.
The report said tests on mice had shown the animals had produced the antibodies necessary to fight the disease, which has killed more than 160 people since outbreaks in Asia in 2003 spread throughout the world.
While the virus has decimated poultry flocks, it cannot yet transfer efficiently enough between humans for it to spark a pandemic.
But as the virus is mutating all the time, health experts fear the day when it does become easily transmitted is not far off.
A pandemic would then claim millions of lives, they warn.
The report says Ho claims to have overcome the problem of manufacturing enough of the vaccine to get it out fast enough to halt a pandemic.
It said the process involves copying genetic material from flu virus protein and combining it with antibodies to help stimulate the immune system.
The technique could be easily applied to other forms of flu virus too, it added.
"These days gene synthesis and cloning can be done in a week so you just substitute the genes and use the same technology," Ho was quoted as saying.
- AFP/ch
Missing from this article is the warning Ho gave about the time it would take to develop this technology. We are left with the impression that, in a few week's time, we could have a cure for a pandemic.
Not so.
The original story, which was carried on Hong Kong's The Standard, carries a bit more detail than the article floating across the wires. Dr. Ho admits we are still some time away from having this vaccine.
"Once we have the results in experimental animals, it will take six to nine months to produce for human use, but it will take another several months for regulatory agencies to approve, such as FDA [Food and Drug Administration] in the United States, before running clinical trials on humans," Ho said.
"It's not going to be very quick," he said, but stressed that "it's prudent to be prepared."
He added: "I'd say the flu pandemic is going to come. We just don't know when."
There is an axiom in medical research, and that is you can cure anything in lab mice. Often, mice test results don't translate very well to humans.
Mice aren't necessarily the best host for testing new drugs, because their physiology differs from humans. But they are plentiful, reproduce quickly allowing researchers to look for genetic anomalies, and are inexpensive. They are the first step in a long road towards getting to a human-tested drug.
According to Dr. Ho, we are at least a year or more away from human clinical trials. And those trials would last for months. Assuming everything works as advertised, this vaccine might be available in a couple of years.
A fact not mentioned in the first article. Irrelevant I guess.
Obviously, if Dr. Ho's work proves out, then it will be a terrific advance in medical science. It could, conceivably halt a pandemic someday, and greatly reduce the scourge of seasonal influenza. One has to hope the human trials are successful, and this vaccine is realized.
But right now, this `breakthrough' is still experimental, and in the early stages. It is two years or more away. And it has to be proved to be both safe and effective. And assuming it works, then there are the logistics of manufacturing, distributing, and inoculating billions of people with this vaccine.
There are a lot of hoops for this `cure' to jump through before we see it `halt a pandemic'.
But this appears to be progress. And that is a hopeful sign.
I've said all along, what we need is more time, and research.
Hopefully we will be granted both.
