Aviron: Nasal Spray Vaccine
September 1999
"We used to buy ferrets by the hundreds in the early days," says Dr. Hunein F. Maassab, professor of epidemiology in the University of Michigan School of Public Health. That was in the mid-1960s, when he first started doing research on the use of live virus vaccines to prevent influenza; the ferret's clinical response to the bug closely mimics that of humans, millions of whom will soon benefit from the work of Dr. Maassab and his colleagues.
Not only did they eventually develop a live virus vaccine whose effectiveness approaches 100%, but it can be administered intranasally rather than by injection, and it can be adapted to combat new strains of influenza almost as fast as they arise.
The latter two points are almost as significant as the first. As The New England Journal of Medicine put it, "This intranasally administered vaccine has the potential for overcoming one of the chief barriers to immunization: the need for yearly injections." Not only do few people enjoy getting a shot, but the intranasal administration enhances the vaccine's efficacy because "the first line of defense is the nose," says Dr. Maassab. "It generates local secretory antibodies that also prevent infection."
And when each vaccine has to be developed for a specific strain of the virus, the speed and unpredictability with which it mutates have often won the race against immunization.
"We devised a method called genetic reassortment to update the vaccine, any time the new antigen appears," says Dr. Maassab. "We patented two master strains that confer attenutation on any new virulent strain by genetic reassortment. Within a reasonable time, from two to six weeks with this new molecular genetic technology, you can update the vaccine and make a new one for any circulating strain that is producing illness."
Dr. Maassab credits the UM Office of Technology Transfer with alerting potential manufacturers to the progress and availability of this process. It was eventually licensed to Aviron, a biopharmaceutical company in Mountain View, Calif., which manufactures FluMist, a nasal spray vaccine using the technology. FDA approval is anticipated by the end of 1999.
"Once this vaccine is licensed, there will be some reward, from the financial point of view, to the inventor, the department and the school," says Dr. Maassab, who chaired the Department of Epidemiology at the School of Public Health from 1989 to 1997. And from a different point of view, there will be rewards for all those potential flu victims who can't use a fear of shots as an excuse anymore.
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