NIH awards $1.55 million to further Purdue bird flu vaccine work

Suresh Mittal, a professor of comparative pathobiology in Purdue’s College of Veterinary Medicine, leads research into a broad spectrum vaccine capable of covering emerging avian influenza viruses. (photo by Vincent Walter)

09/24/2015 |

The National Institutes of Health has awarded $1.55 million to a Purdue University-led avian influenza vaccine project.

The funding will allow the continuation of vaccine research led by Suresh Mittal, a professor of comparative pathobiology in Purdue’s College of Veterinary Medicine, and includes collaborators at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Mittal and CDC collaborators Suryaprakash Sambhara and Ian York created a vaccine in 2006 for the H5N1 bird flu virus. The team is now focusing on developing a broad spectrum 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. The new H7N9 influenza virus was found in China in 2013 and is responsible for 229 deaths and 665 cases as of May 2015, according to the World Health Organization.

“These viruses begin in wild birds and as they evolve they expand to poultry and then to humans,” Mittal says. “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 can’t 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.”

-Elizabeth Gardner
See original news release at http://bit.ly/1V9qEnM