In particular, Generex has announced that the president of Antigen Express, Eric von Hofe, will focus his efforts and those of the company on bringing this new vaccine into the clinic in the shortest time possible.
A similar vaccine peptide, designed using a portion of a protein expressed in breast cancer cells modified with Ii-Key, is currently in clinical trials at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
“The threat of a pandemic by avian influenza has made it clear that yesterday’s vaccine technologies are woefully insufficient,” said Mr von Hofe. “The vaccines being developed at Antigen Express have a clear role to play in responding to threats posed by agents such as H5N1 influenza.”
If an avian flu epidemic were to break out amongst humans current vaccine development methods would be likely to be insufficient to supply the world’s need for such a vaccine. According to Generex, current estimates are that the total production capacity of the world for producing an avian flu vaccine using traditional methods is less than 40 million doses, at the cost of several 100 million dollars.
A compounding problem in developing vaccines for the avian flu is that two doses are required to achieve protective immunity given that people have never been exposed to a flu virus similar enough to impart even partial immunological protection.