Generation of a clinical universal flu vaccine candidate

“纵观历史，流感大流行一直是反复出现的健康事件。1918年臭名昭著的西班牙流感导致1亿人死亡，占世界人口的5%。最近的一次国际大流行是2009年的H1N1病毒。致命的H3N2毒株曾在澳大利亚造成22.5万例感染，目前正使英国成为特别危险的冬季流感季节(1)。因此，各国政府特别关注流感大流行对公共卫生的风险。英国政府2015年“全国突发事件风险登记册”强调，流感大流行是影响和可能性最高的风险事件之一。该登记册还预测，大流行的后果是一半的英国人口可能被感染，到疫情结束时，可能会有2万到75万人死亡。疫苗仍然是防御大流行的黄金标准。由于新型毒株和突变可能迅速而意外地导致大规模流感大流行，因此仍然需要能够快速和按需开发的疫苗，同时还能有效地对抗这些毒株和突变。目前的季节性流感疫苗技术不能满足这一需求。这类疫苗的生产速度往往很慢，存在批次差异，而且不能按比例扩大以满足大型疫苗接种制度的需要。此外，由于大流行性流感毒株将来自一种新的毒株，因此不能指望季节性流感疫苗对大流行性流感提供任何保护。季节性流感疫苗的有效性从60%到10%不等，说明了这一点。英国政府已表示希望大规模储存流感疫苗，以备大流行时使用，希望库存可达6个月的供应量。然而，英国政府最近强调，目前的疫苗技术在有效性和保质期方面都存在不足。为了满足这一需求，Emergex将把其专有的金纳米颗粒合成t细胞疫苗平台应用于通用流感疫苗的生产和验证。由于这些疫苗将利用通用病毒表位，因此对所有流感毒株都有效。合成的性质意味着疫苗将有很长的保质期，生产过程快速、廉价和高度可扩展。纳米颗粒小意味着我们的疫苗适合通过微针皮肤贴片接种，可以通过邮寄分发，从而成为一种实用且具有成本效益的大规模疫苗接种方法。”

"Influenza pandemics have been a recurrent health event through-out history. The infamous Spanish Flu of 1918, resulted in up to 100 million deaths - 5% of the world population. The most recent international pandemic took the shape of H1N1 virus in 2009\. The virulent H3N2 strain that resulted in \>225,000 infections in Australia is currently making a particularly dangerous UK winter flu season (1).For this reason, governments are particularly concerned about the risks of Influenza pandemics to public health. The UK government 2015 ""National Risk register of Civil Emergencies"" highlighted an Influenza pandemic as one the highest risk events in terms of both impact and likelihood. The register also predicts that the consequences of a pandemic is half the UK population potentially being infected, with between 20,000 and 750,000 additional deaths potentially by its end.Vaccines remain the gold standard of defence against pandemics. Since large scale influenza pandemics can occur rapidly and unexpectedly, resulting from novel strains and mutations, there remains a need for vaccines that can be developed quickly and on-demand while also being effective against those strains and mutations. Current seasonal influenza vaccine technologies do not fit this need. Manufacture of such vaccines is often slow, experiences batch variation, and cannot be scaled to meet the needs of large vaccination regimes. Furthermore, since the pandemic strain will result from a new strain, seasonal influenza vaccines could not be expected to provide any protection against pandemic influenza. This is illustrated by the effectiveness of seasonal flu vaccine ranging from 60% to as low as 10%.The UK government has shown a desire for mass stockpiling of influenza vaccines for preparedness in case of pandemics, with a desired stock of up to 6 months' supply. However, the UK government has recently highlighted current vaccine technologies inadequate, both in terms of effectiveness and shelf-life.To meet this need Emergex will apply its proprietary gold nanoparticle synthetic T-cell vaccine platform to the generation and validation of a universal Influenza vaccine. Since these vaccines would utilise universal viral epitopes it would be effective against all Influenza strains. The synthetic nature means the vaccine would have extensive shelf-life and the production process fast, cheap and highly scalable. The small nanoparticle size means our vaccines are suited to be administered by a microneedle skin patch, which could be distributed by post, allowing a practical and cost-effective method of mass vaccination."