Indian origin professor awarded grant to research on rare bird flu vaccine

An Indian origin professor in the US has been awarded a grant of $1.55 million for research on a rare bird flu vaccine. Suresh Mittal, professor at Purdue’s College of Veterinary Medicine, USA has been awarded the grant by The National Institutes of Health (USA) to help eliminate the severity of symptoms, reduce transmission of the virus and save lives.

Avian flu symptoms in humans have ranged from typical human flu-like symptoms (fever, cough, sore throat, and muscle aches) to eye infections, pneumonia, severe respiratory diseases (such as acute respiratory distress syndrome), and other severe and life-threatening complications.

In 2006, a vaccine for the H5N1 bird flu virus was created by Mittal’s team. The team is now focusing on developing a broad range vaccine capable of covering emerging influenza viruses that have the potential to cause the next influenza pandemic in humans, including H5N1 H7N3, H7N7, H7N9 and H9N2. According to the World Health Organization, the new H7N9 flu virus was found in China in 2013 and is responsible for 229 deaths and 665 cases as of May 2015.

“These viruses begin in wild birds and as they evolve, they expand to poultry and then to humans. There is a very real risk that we will face an avian influenza pandemic at some point in the future and we need to be prepared. One important way to prepare is to develop and stockpile an effective vaccine. We cannot predict what strain of the virus will be involved in a pandemic, so we need a vaccine that can offer protection across all of the strains,” says Mittal, who is working to create a vaccine that offers broad protection against multiple strains and mutations of the virus.

His method uses a harmless adenovirus as a vector to deliver avian influenza virus genes into the body where they produce influenza proteins that prime the immune system to fight an infection.