BALTIMORE (WMAR) — If there’s a silver lining from the pandemic, it’s the scientific advancements in making vaccines.
Biotech and pharmaceutical companies are applying it to flu shots, which they think could save thousands of lives.
“This could be another real game changer,” said Dr. Christopher Thompson, an associate professor of biology at Loyola University Maryland.
Despite the availability of vaccines, hundreds of thousands of people die from the flu worldwide every year.
Pharmaceutical companies have faced longstanding challenges with developing flu shots. Dr. Thompson said they take about six months to make and are 20-40 percent effective.
“We are watching what is happening in the southern hemisphere, trying to predict what will happen in our flu season up here. The virus may mutate during production of the vaccine and we can’t do anything about it,” said Dr. Thompson.
According to the CDC, this process has been used for more than 70 years and uses a weakened or inactive germ to trigger an immune response.
However, scientists have been researching mRNA technology for a decade that instead teach our cells how to make a protein that then triggers an immune response and can be manufactured much more quickly.
“We can wait a little bit longer to try and have a better prediction of what the virus is gonna look like,” said Dr. Thompson.
Pfizer and Moderna both developed COVID-19 vaccines with mRNA that were highly effective.
Now that technology is being used in clinical trials for flu shots.
This week, Moderna announced the beginning of another trial for seasonal flu vaccines using mRNA technology. The company is also prepping its first candidate for phase 3 trials, and they have others in development that offer a combination of protections.
“There’s a hope that we can give you one vaccine every fall that has stuff for flu, has stuff for COVID, has stuff for RSV and you feel crumby for a couple days as you react to that vaccine and then you’re protected from all of them for the next year,” said Dr. Thompson.
Dr. Thompson predicts we are still a year or two away from FDA approval.
