The Trump Administration has launched a project that would research a universal flu vaccine. The project aims to create a flu shot that doesn’t have to be updated every year to match the latest strains of the virus.
Dubbed Generation Gold Standard, by Health and Human Services, the stated goal is to produce a vaccine that could protect people against other respiratory viruses that could cause a pandemic, such as bird flu and coronaviruses.
“Generation Gold Standard is a paradigm shift,” said National Institutes of Heath Director Jay Bhattacharya in a statement announcing the project. “It extends vaccine protection beyond strain-specific limits and prepares for flu viral threats — not just today’s, but tomorrow’s as well — using traditional vaccine technology brought into the 21st century.”
“I’m glad to see that this administration is still wanting to invest in developing next-generation influenza vaccines or respiratory vaccines in general,” says Ted Ross, director of Global Vaccine Development at the Cleveland Clinic.
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Some scientists are said to be “puzzled” by the implications of this decision, according to a report by NPR.
The project plans to use an approach that would involve injecting people with a whole flu virus that has been killed with a chemical to render it harmless, but is still capable of stimulating the immune system. Most vaccine experts consider the whole killed virus approach to be antiquated. “This is a head-scratcher to me. This is puzzling,” says Dr. Gregory Poland, a vaccine expert who leads the Atria Academy of Science and Medicine in New York.
“We’re going back to technology that was used 40, 50 years ago or more. So this is a little surprising to me why you would go backwards to this technology? It’s a very old technology. This is what influenza vaccines in the 40s, 50s, and 60s looked like,” Poland said.
“We have live attenuated nasal spray influenza vaccines. We have recombinant influenza vaccines. We have an mRNA-based influenza vaccine,” Poland says. “So why would you put all your eggs in one basket?”
“So that’s odd,” says Dr. Jesse Goodman, a former Food and Drug Administration vaccine expert who’s now at Georgetown University. “If you’re going to do this, have an open scientific competition for the best ideas. There should be transparency for the process of how to allot funding.”
The Trump administration already said it was being “transparent” with the public and that a universal flu vaccine should be ready for widescale testing next year. It could also be available to the public within four years, which is a very ambitious timeline.
“The BPL platform is fully government-owned and NIH-developed,” the Trump administration’s announcement of the project says. “This approach ensures radical transparency, public accountability, and freedom from commercial conflicts of interest.”
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