mRNA FLU VAX CLINICAL TRIALS- The risk of death from influenza has decreased over the years thanks mostly to vaccines but it still is a serious illness that affects millions of people the world over. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: estimates are that flu in the United States causes a range of 140,000 to 710,000 hospitalizations annually, and an estimated 12,000 to 52,000 deaths each year. And while we have vaccines, they are about 40 to 60% effective.
Dr. John Vanchiere professor of pediatrics at LSU Health-Shreveport and associate director for emerging viral threats explains “So each spring the medical and scientific community in the United States get together and they actually look at what flu strains have been circulating in the southern hemisphere during their winter which is our summer. And so by in the spring which is the early part of their winter, we have to make really an educated choice about what we expect will be the strains circulating in the United States nine months out.”
And so the flu vaccine you get now is formulated on the 4 most prevalent strains from the last flu season south of the equator. But researchers are looking at developing flu vaccines based on the more recent mRNA bio-technology which allowed for the rapid development of the Covid-19 vaccine. Vanchiere says the mRNA biotechnology could be a real game-changer in fighting influenza.
“The mRNA platform is more agile, it takes less time to produce that vaccine using the mRNA platform and therefore that lead time can be less which means we can pick more accurately what strains we expect to be circulating in our area in the wintertime,” Vanchiere said.
Researchers at LSU Health Shreveport are now offering an mRNA Flu Vaccine Clinical Trial and are looking for volunteers age 18 and older to participate in a head-to-head comparison to see how a mRNA flu vaccine performs against a regular vaccine.
“The way the study is designed to compare the two vaccines, the standard to the mRNA is that individuals will receive one or the other,” Vanchiere said. ”Which one they get is randomized like flipping a coin and so we’re actually blinded to that. So they won’t know until the end of the study which actual flu vaccine they received”.
Those who get to participate will receive a little over $100 for the in-person visits which are minimal as they will be using a phone-app to report any symptoms. If you’d like to learn more about participating in LSU-Health Shreveport’s mRNA Flu Vaccine Clinical Trial, the website is www.fluvaccinestudy.com . The trial’s sponsor is the biopharmaceutical company Pfizer.
