Research choice for universal flu vaccine raises questions: recordings

Vaccination experts are confused by a project that the Trump administration has launched to develop a universal flu vaccine, which has long been a difficult goal in medical research.

The project refers to the gold standard and aims to create a flu vaccination that does not have to be updated every year in order to meet the latest tribes of the virus. The project also aims to produce a vaccine that could protect people from other respiratory viruses that could cause pandemic such as bird flu and corona viruses.

“Generation Gold Standard is a paradigm shift,” said National Institutes of Heath Director Jay Bhattcharya in a statement in which the project was announced. “It extends vaccine protection beyond the trunk-specific limit values ​​and is only preparing for the threats between flu viruses today, but also for the morning with traditional vaccine technology that is brought into the 21st century.”

The announcement surprised the vaccine researchers in view of the anti-accacine posture of health officers such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

“I am glad to see that this administration still wants to invest in the development of the next generation of the next generation or in general atmosphere,” says Ted Ross, director of global vaccine development in Cleveland Clinic.

An old vaccine technology back in the spotlight

But Ross and other external vaccine experts are falsified by many aspects of the generation of gold standards.

First, the project plans to use an approach in which people with a flu virus were killed people with a chemical in order to make it harmless, but can still stimulate the immune system. Most vaccine experts consider the entire killed virus approach to be antiquated.

“This is a head scratcher for me. This is puzzling,” says Dr. Gregory Poland, a vaccine expert who heads the Atria Academy of Science and Medicine in New York.

“We go back to the technology that was used 40, 50 years ago or more. So this is a little surprising for me why they would go to this technology again? It is a very old technology,” says Poland. “Influenza vaccines in the 40s, 50 and 60s looked like this.”

Vaccines of the entire dead virus tend to generate more side effects, including high fever and seizures that parents in particular can frighten, Poland, Ross and others. Recent, more advanced technologies show with fewer side effects more promising.

“We have living nasal spray influenza vaccines. We have recombinant influenza vaccines. We have an mRNA-based influenza vaccine,” says Poland. “So why should you put all of your eggs in a basket?”

An expensive bet on a single approach

And then there is the price: 500 million US dollars, which is a large amount, especially at a time when the financing of federal health research is reduced. The money that was originally intended to explore a variety of technologies for the next generation of COVID-19 vaccines.

“This amount of money is astronomical. It is stupid to bring so much money on a technology,” says Rick Bright, a former federal expert who is now a private consultant. “What we need now are courageous solutions of the 21st century, no retreat to nostalgia.”

Another aspect that pulls up the eyebrows is the fact that the technology, which is designated as “beta-propiolactone (BPL)-in-navigated, full virus platform” two NIH scientists. Matthew Memoli and Dr. Jeffery Tautenberger.

Memoli was recently appointed deputy director of the NIH after acting as Trump's acting director. Tautenberger was recently appointed deputy director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Tautenberger has a patent for technology. In addition, the strategy was selected without independent public review and is based on very limited preliminary tests.

“This is strange,” says Dr. Jesse Goodman, a former expert for the Food and Drug Administration, who is now at Georgetown University. “If you want to do this, you have an open scientific competition for the best ideas. There should be transparency for the process of how financing can be assigned.”

The Department of Health and Human Services confirmed the costs of the project and answered a question about the two vaccination candidates who were examined, but did not answer any additional questions from NPR on the project, including the selection of officials who selected this approach and how the efforts were checked.

At the announcement, however, the administration said that a universal flu vaccine should be ready for broad -haul test next year and could be available to the public within four years, which is a very ambitious timeline.

“The BPL platform is completely owned and developed by the state,” says the announcement. “This approach ensures radical transparency, public accountability and freedom of commercial conflicts of interest.”