NIAID head says universal flu vaccine on the horizon

A steamy July day made an unlikely setting for discussion of this winter’s flu season, but Dr. Anthony Fauci is on a mission to promote finding an effective universal flu vaccine.

Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), spoke Wednesday at a National Press Club Headliners Luncheon.

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the Spanish flu pandemic that killed an estimated 20 million to 50 million people worldwide. NIAID has unveiled a strategic plan that makes it a priority to find a vaccine that protects against multiple influenza strains, including those that might cause a pandemic.

So far, one experimental vaccine, M-001, is headed into Phase 2 clinical trials.

As NIAID director, Fauci oversees research on a range of infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS, Ebola, Zika, tuberculosis and malaria. NIAID also supports research on transplantation and immune-related illnesses, including autoimmune disorders, asthma and allergies.

Other communicable diseases may spend more time in the spotlight, but respiratory illnesses such as flu are what really keep infectious disease experts up at night, Fauci said, because they are spread so easily.

“Ebola is spread by direct contact with bodily fluids,” he said, while respiratory infections are spread by droplets from when a person coughs, sneezes or even talks.

Also, the influenza virus mutates readily, meaning that new vaccines must be made each year in an often frustrating attempt to match the strains projected to circulate in the upcoming season. On the other hand, the measles virus does not tend to mutate. The measles vaccine is highly effective, he noted, and has remained the same for years.

Each year seasonal influenza results in 140,000 to 710,000 hospitalizations and between 12,000 and 56,000 deaths in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Fauci noted that the 2017-2018 U.S. influenza season was among the worst of the last decade.

“Parts of the virus mutate from season to season, it ‘drifts’ each year. We’re going to have outbreak every year” he said. During winter, dry conditions are favorable to the bug, he said.

The body often can defend itself against these slight “drifts,” Fauci said, but “every once in a while there is not just a drift, but a shift” in the mutation, which causes a pandemic, an outbreak of global proportions.

The solution, Fauci said, will be found in the part of the virus that does not change from year to year. “There are parts of virus that are same or similar from season to season and even pandemic to pandemic.”

Fauci predicted that the first iteration will not be a truly universal vaccine, but a “1.0 version” that protects against some major flu strains, followed by a “2.0” version that includes other strains.

“The hope ultimately is to have a vaccine to give to children six months or older that protects against any influenza,” he said, and then have a booster later.

During the question and answer session Fauci noted that vaccines in general have come under assault. “We are in some ways victims of our own success. It has created complacency, people thinking that the risk of the vaccine is more than the risk of the disease,” he said. “That is clearly not the case.”