Generation of a clinical universal flu vaccine candidate

“流感大流行在整个历史上一直是一种反复发生的健康事件。臭名昭著的1918年西班牙流感，导致多达1亿人死亡-占世界人口的5%。最近的一次国际大流行是在2009年以H1N1病毒的形式出现的。在澳大利亚导致225，000人感染的H3 N2毒株目前正在使英国的冬季流感季节变得特别危险（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《国家民事紧急事件风险登记册》强调，流感大流行是影响和可能性最高的风险事件之一。登记册还预测，大流行的后果是英国一半的人口可能被感染，到其结束时可能会增加20，000至750，000人死亡。疫苗仍然是防御大流行病的黄金标准。由于大规模流感大流行可能迅速且意外地发生，这是由新的毒株和突变引起的，因此仍然需要可以快速和按需开发同时还有效对抗这些毒株和突变的疫苗。目前的季节性流感疫苗技术不符合这一需求。此类疫苗的生产通常很慢，会经历批次变化，并且无法扩大规模以满足大型疫苗接种方案的需求。此外，由于大流行毒株将由新毒株产生，因此不能指望季节性流感疫苗对大流行流感提供任何保护。季节性流感疫苗的有效性从60%到低至10%不等就说明了这一点。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，所需的库存量最多可供6个月使用。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将应用其专有的金纳米颗粒合成T细胞疫苗平台来生产和验证通用流感疫苗。由于这些疫苗将利用通用病毒表位，因此其将对所有流感毒株有效。合成性质意味着疫苗将具有广泛的保质期和生产过程快速，廉价和高度可扩展性。小的纳米颗粒尺寸意味着我们的疫苗适合通过微针皮肤贴片施用，可以通过邮寄分发，从而实现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."