Motivated by their recent COVID-19 vaccine success and approval, Pfizer and BioNTech are adapting the same messenger RNA, or mRNA, technology to upgrade the flu vaccine.
“Once it became very clear how successful they were, it was sort of an obvious jump to see what other vaccines can be enhanced and improved by this technology,” said Dr. Edward Walsh, head of infectious diseases at Rochester General Hospital.
Walsh and Dr. Ann Falsey, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Rochester Medical Center, are leading local trials for the mRNA flu vaccine.
URMC and RGH are two of the 12 sites nationwide that will participate in the trials.
Phase 1 will enroll 350 healthy volunteers between the ages of 65 and 85 across all the sites. About 50 will be from this region.
“We're hopeful that it will result in a more effective vaccine, particularly in the most vulnerable,” Falsey said. “It will allow the companies to be more nimble and responsive to the different circulating strains.”
According to Falsey, the current flu vaccines take a long time to produce, which is counterproductive to how quickly the virus mutates. She said mRNA technology will allow for a quick turnaround time if variants emerge.
“We're hopeful that this technology could be a game-changer for flu,” Falsey said. “It needs to be studied, but we're very optimistic.”
According to the World Health Organization, 3 million to 5 million people worldwide contract severe cases of the flu each season, and as many as 650,000 of them do not survive.
Walsh said the COVID-19 pandemic has subdued other respiratory viruses like the flu.
“We haven't seen the flu in over a year," he said. "It may well come roaring back -- we don't know, of course -- and we would like to do better than the 50-60% efficiency that we've been doing so far.”
Falsey said a successful mRNA flu vaccine may take up to two years to produce.
Anyone interested in participating in the study should go to flu.urmc.edu to sign up.
