Grant: Operating Grant

Seasonal Influenza infection is an important medical problem. Each year many Canadians become ill with the "flu", resulting in economic loss and a substantial number of hospitalizations and deaths. The current flu vaccine is produced in chicken eggs and requires the identification of each season's new circulating flu viruses, followed by development and testing of a perfectly adapted vaccine. This is a timely and costly procedure that often results in under vaccination due to prioritization using limited stock supplies and inefficient vaccines developed against flu viruses no longer circulating. There is therefore a great need to develop new vaccination approaches for achieving long-term protection against different flu viruses. This application proposes to evaluate a novel universal seasonal influenza vaccine in 22 healthy human volunteers. We will use a new DNA technology that eliminates egg-based virus culture entirely and potential allergic reactions. The DNA-based universal influenza vaccine has already been shown to be safe and efficacious against a broad range of flu viruses in several animal studies and is further supported by a promising Phase I clinical study focusing on avian influenza currently ongoing in the US. Such a vaccine is easy to produce in large quantities, will eliminate the need for yearly flu shots and will be available to the entire population at any given time. A synthetic vaccine made of selected and optimized influenza proteins (parts of the virus) has been designed to focus on stimulating protection against many existent and emerging seasonal flu viruses. The main objective of this project, a Phase I clinical trial in healthy volunteers will confirm safety and compare the range of protection against flu viruses obtained with this novel vaccine. Protective antibody levels will be evaluated in this pilot safety study using the developed universal DNA vaccine when delivered in a highly tolerable and safe fashion to 22 healthy volunteers.