csiro may have vaccine for bird flu

Australian scientists say they might soon have a vaccine for bird flu, as signs grow that the disease is becoming entrenched in South-East Asia.

CSIRO Livestock Industries plans to trial an experimental vaccine on about a dozen chickens in its high security facility just outside Geelong, Victoria, that it hopes will protect poultry from the deadly flu.


CSIRO researcher Chris Prideaux said his organisation had developed a vaccine that delivered a portion of the bird flu genetic material.

That material, transferred to the bird via a genetically altered virus, gave the bird immunity to H5N1.

Dr Prideaux said the virus could be the answer to a problem that is looming across Asia and might ultimately threaten Australia and its poultry industries.

"This technology could really give us an effective vaccine that could be easily given to poultry and give birds a protection against avian flu," he told AAP.

Dr Prideaux said the advantage of the CSIRO vaccine was that it was not produced from a live inactivated virus.

He said these could result in the virus persisting in a flock or re-emerging to cause disease later on.

Another advantage of the CSIRO vaccine is that it is genetically different to the avian flu, making it much easier to differentiate.

After trialling the vaccine in Geelong, CSIRO will then look to take it overseas.

As avian flu does not exist in Australia, the vaccine will have to be trialled in a country where the virus has a presence.

Dr Prideaux said like vaccines for humans, there was always a chance the virus could mutate.



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A trial vaccine, utilising Imugene Limited’s platform adenoviral vector technology to deliver the necessary genetic material, has been developed by CSIRO Livestock Industries.. The delivery platform creates a vaccine which is safer to use and is very cost effective for mass delivery. Efficacy testing of the vaccine has commenced within the high biosecurity laboratories at AAHL.

In order to provide a viable alternative to culling, it has been important to develop effective vaccines that can prevent and control outbreaks of bird flu. The trial vaccine has the potential to protect the world’s poultry industry from further outbreaks and its spread to currently unaffected regions.

Unlike previous influenza vaccines, the vaccine currently under evaluation by CSIRO delivers only a portion of the flu genetic material, instead of the whole virus, making it possible to distinguish between vaccinated and infected birds. This means a vaccination program could be undertaken to protect whole areas of countries while still maintaining surveillance for disease

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Dr Warwick Lamb, Managing Director of Imugene. “The gene used is the correct protective gene and once we get correct expression of this gene, we expect effective protection against the Avian Influenza.”
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If the H5N1 vaccine proves effectivei t will be cheap to deliver since it can be administered in drinking water, some-thing Prideaux describes as a first for a flu vaccine. Initial trials on 45 birds willtake a few months, and may lead to theavailability of a product next year. “We’ve proven the principle,”Prideaux said. Should there be another outbreak we will be able to fast-track a vaccine against the strain using the same method.