New push for mRNA bird flu vaccine development: WHO

Goal is to stem inequity by helping poorer countries develop their own vaccines

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The World Health Organisation (WHO) announced on July 29 a new project to accelerate the development in poorer countries of vaccines for human bird flu infections using cutting-edge messenger RNA (mRNA) technology.

The WHO said Argentinian manufacturer Sinergium Biotech would lead the effort and had already begun developing candidate H5N1 vaccines.

The bird flu H5N1 first emerged in 1996, but since 2020, an exponential growth in outbreaks in birds has occurred in parallel with the virus increasingly jumping to mammals, including cattle in US farms and a few humans.

This has prompted fears the virus could spark a future pandemic.

Sinergium is aiming to establish proof-of-concept in pre-clinical models for its candidate vaccines, the WHO said.

Once the pre-clinical data is ready, the technology, materials and expertise will be shared with a network of manufacturers in poorer countries, allowing them to accelerate their own development and production.