Company reports positive preclinical data against variant influenza strains.

2004 JAN 7 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- ID Biomedical reported it has data demonstrating protection against variant strains of influenza.

Results from preclinical experiments performed by ID Biomedical scientists and recently published in the September 2003 issue of the peer reviewed journal, Vaccine, provides evidence that nasal Proteosome-influenza subunit vaccines can protect against infection by variant strains of influenza virus that have "drifted" from the strain present in the vaccine.

In the study reported by Jones et al. in Vaccine (21;3706-3712) mice were given a nasal Proteosome-influenza vaccine containing a recombinant influenza hemagglutinin (HA) from the A/Texas H1 subtype of influenza. Mice were then exposed to a lethal dose of a mouse-adapted A/Taiwan H1 strain of influenza virus which was not present in the trivalent composition of the vaccine. The A/Taiwan and A/Texas strains represent drift variants within the H1 subtype.

Nasal immunization with the subunit Proteosome-A/Texas vaccine protected 100% of the mice against mortality and weight loss (a sign of clinical illness) following exposure to the live A/Taiwan drift variant virus. The same challenge dose of live A/Taiwan virus caused 100% mortality in nonvaccinated control animals. Mice that received an intramuscular vaccination with the same dose of A/Texas HA (not formulated as a Proteosome-HA ...