Emory to seek swine flu vaccine testers

By Craig Schneider

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Want to help in the fight against swine flu?

The federal government and vaccine makers on Wednesday put out the call for thousands of volunteers -- from babies to the elderly -- to test a new vaccine for the swine flu.

The National Institutes of Health announced a network of medical centers -- including Emory University’s -- that will begin a series of clincial tests, with the first shots coming in early August.

If there are no immediate safety concerns, such as allergic reactions, testing quickly would begin in children as young as 6 months.

Scientists hope to identify a safe vaccine before the virus’s expected rebound in the fall.

Unlike regular winter flu, which is most dangerous to people over 65 and under 2, the new swine flu that has quickly spread around the globe seems to disproportionately target school-age children, teenagers and young adults.

Emory will begin recruiting healthy adults, seniors and children into clinical trials beginning in early August.

Two adult clinical trials at Emory will enroll healthy adults and seniors and will be conducted at the Emory Vaccine Center’s Hope Clinic in downtown Decatur. Two pediatric clinical trials will be conducted at the Emory-Children’s Center and will evaluate vaccine safety, tolerability and immune responses in infants older than 6 months, toddlers, children and adolescents up to 18 years.

For more information, call 877-424-4673 about the adult and senior studies, or 404-727-4044 about the pediatric studies.

Volunteers will get $50 per visit, with five to seven visits. Researchers expect volunteers to get about two shots each. By early September, blood tests should show how much immune protection the initial dose triggered -- and if a low-dose shot worked or a higher dose was needed. It will take another month to get information on the second shot.

Will the results come in time? “It’s going to be very, very close,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

The world’s first human trials of a swine flu vaccine began this week in Australia, drug company officials said Wednesday.

Two biotechnology companies have started injecting adult volunteers in the southern city of Adelaide with their vaccines. Adelaide-based Vaxine began trials Monday with 300 subjects, and Melbourne’s CSL has 240 people in its seven-month trial, which started Wednesday. The companies say their trials are the first tests of a swine flu vaccine on humans.

“We’re in the southern hemisphere, and that is where the problem is right now,” Vaxine research director Nikolai Petrovsky said. “The demand was here yesterday. We’re right in the middle of a surge of swine flu cases where perhaps the United States won’t have to worry about it as much until their flu season hits in six months.”

-- The Associated Press contributed to this report.