Inviragen in quest for second-gen vaccines

FORT COLLINS — Dan Stinchcomb and his team of researchers at Inviragen are closely watching the worldwide race to develop and manufacture an H1N1 vaccine for the coming influenza season.

Inviragen is also a player in the quest to develop a vaccine that could be effective against multiple flu strains, including H1N1 or swine flu and seasonal flu. The Fort Collins company, formed in 2003, has previously taken on dengue fever, the West Nile virus and avian influenza.

Now, based on its ground-breaking research on avian flu, the company is positioning itself to develop a vaccine that could protect against multiple strains with one dose.

“The recent outbreak of the H1N1 swine-origin influenza highlights the unpredictability of influenza viruses,´ said Stinchcomb, CEO and co-founder of the company. “Current influenza vaccine manufacturers are scrambling to complete seasonal flu vaccine production and add production of a vaccine for the new H1N1 virus. In the future, Inviragen’s technology could permit manufacture of a single vaccine for both seasonal and pandemic use.”

That view is shared by Jorge Osorio, M.D., Inviragen’s chief scientific officer and an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin. “Inviragen has successfully developed vaccines that protect animals from lethal H5N1 avian influenza with a single low dose,” Osorio said. “Our technology is perfectly suited to engineer a vaccine that will induce protection from avian, swine and human influenza strains.”

Stinchcomb notes that Inviragen’s pursuit of a multiple-strain flu vaccine is perhaps four to five years away. “Our research is really focused on a second-generation flu vaccine,” he said. “We’re essentially engineering new vaccines that will stimulate the immune system in different ways to hopefully provide broader protection.”

Meanwhile, huge pharmaceutical companies like Novartis AG are gearing up to provide an H1N1 vaccine for the coming flu season in the Northern Hemisphere. The Swiss company announced in mid-June that it had successfully completed production of its first batch of vaccine and expected to have it approved and ready to ship by September.

H1N1 official pandemic

That’s great news because the H1N1 virus, which erupted onto the world stage in Mexico in late March, has been declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization. More than 94,000 people in 70 countries have been infected with swine flu virus and more than 400 have died, including 170 in the United States.

While this particular strain of flu has fallen off the radar in most Northern Hemisphere countries, it’s still very active in the Southern Hemisphere, now experiencing winter. At least 44 people in Argentina alone have died from a recent outbreak.

Those numbers may sound scary, but keep in mind that normal seasonal flu kills more than 200,000 people each year worldwide. Still, the unpredictability of flu viruses and their ability to suddenly mutate into new viral strains makes health officials nervous about what the so-far-relatively-mild H1N1 may do in the next flu season.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta said in late June that five vaccine makers were producing 120 million doses for the coming flu season with one-third shipped by Sept. 1 and the rest ready by Nov. 1. That’s allaying some fears raised in the late spring that it might take until December or January to get the vaccine.

All of this is swirling around and above the research going on at Inviragen, which is on its own path to a more comprehensive approach to influenza immunization.

“We’re not racing with anyone,” Stinchcomb said. “Our hope is to develop a second-generation vaccine that protects broadly against multiple strains of flu. That’s the Holy Grail of flu research.”

Stinchcomb said he’s thankful that — so far — swine flu has not shown the ability to transmit directly from animal to human, as has been the case with avian flu, which has a mortality rate of 60 percent of those infected.

But the current new version of swine flu is not about to go away, he said. “I think it’s highly probable that we’ll see increasing cases of H1N1. And we really can’t predict what will happen next season and how it will evolve.”

Stinchcomb said the current outbreak is reminding health officials and researchers that the flu-fighting game is ever-changing and a more comprehensive solution is needed.

“I think one thing this outbreak teaches us is we can’t predict where the next flu outbreak will come from,” he said. “So if we can come up with a vaccine that’s more all-purpose, it’ll more broadly protect against existing flu viruses and potentially against a new pandemic.” 

Steve Porter covers health care for the Northern Colorado Business Report. He can be reached at 970-221-5400, ext. 225, or at sporter@ncbr.com.

on Facebook on LinkedIn