TGA News Issue 51 (November 2006)
Influenza meeting & syposium
The Australian Influenza Vaccine Committee (AIVC) met on 4 October 2006 to review the influenza vaccine composition for the year 2007 influenza season. The committee was expanded this year to include representatives of the Australian National Influenza Centres as well as expert epidemiologists and consultant influenza virologists. The committee agreed to adopt the September 2006 WHO recommendations.
The vaccine components should include:
- an A/New Caledonia/20/99 (H1N1)-like strain, 15 µg haemagglutinin (HA) per dose
- an A/Wisconscin/67/2005 (H3N2)-like strain, 15 µg haemagglutinin (HA) per dose
- a B/Malaysia/2506/2004 (H1N1)-like strain, 15 µg haemagglutinin (HA) per dose
The following viruses are recommended as suitable vaccine strains:
- A/New Caledonia/20/99 (IVR-116)
- A/Wisconsin/67/2005 (NYMCX-161B) or A/Hiroshima/52/2005 (IVR-142)
- B/Malaysia/2506/2004
The SRID reference standard reagents for all the above vaccine strains are available from NIBSC (UK).
The AIVC meeting was followed by the 2nd Australian Influenza Symposium, held at the TGA, on 5-6 October. The Melbourne WHO Collaborating Centre for Reference and Research on Influenza and the TGA organised the Scientific Program. The Department of Health and Ageing and the TGA provided the funds to hold the meeting. The aim of these meetings is to bring together key constituents of the WHO Collaborating Centre, the TGA and the Department of Health and Ageing to discuss issues involving pandemic and inter-pandemic influenza.
The 1st Australian Influenza Symposium hosted by the TGA in 2005 served to educate the public health community on how WHO's Global Influenza Program works, how the Australian WHO Collaborating Centre, the TGA, the Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing and manufacturers interact and how the global WHO program has responded to the recent outbreak of avian influenza.
The 2nd Australian Influenza Symposium focused on what has been achieved so far through the activities stimulated by the recent NHMRC grants, both to serve as a forum for the people with overlapping interests to meet and discuss their work and to strengthen the WHO Collaborating Centres' link with the research community.
Over 100 delegates attended the meeting which covered a wide variety of topics on H5 Avian influenza viruses, including:
- H5 in Indonesia
- developments in vaccines and antivirals against H5
- development of national protocols for the detection of Influenza A H5N1
- improved diagnosis with quality assurance of serological & molecular diagnostics
- rapid point-of-care detection of avian influenza virus using an Ion-Channel switch
- point-of-care diagnostic tests to differentiate haemagglutinin (HA) subtypes in patient samples
- production of nasal filters to enhance prophylactic protection from aerosol exposure
- strengthening the contribution of Australian general practice to the control of pandemic influenza
- screening agents active against the late-stage inflammatory cytokines for activity against influenza
- assessment of development of resistance to neuraminidase inhibitors in A(H5N1) viruses
- sensitive, rapid and accurate detection of the emergence of neuraminidase inhibitor resistance by real-time PCR, Ligase Chain Reaction (LCR) and Rolling Circle Amplification.
The meeting ended with a workshop and a series of issues and needs were identified and grouped into the following general categories.
- Diagnostic and surveillance matters
- Difficulties in diagnosing seasonal and pandemic influenza both in Australia and regionally.
- No ongoing mechanism in Australia to address emerging disease diagnostics (SARS and H5N1 have been tackled using urgent NHMRC grants).
- Public health interventions in pandemic situations need to be accurate and rapid.
- Issues around access to information such as epidemiology data, sequence data etc to keep up to date with any evolving pandemic.
- Need to maintain the involvement of diverse groups such as human and animal health experts, ornithologists, sociologists, economists in pandemic preparedness and surveillance.
- New technologies need to be fully evaluated in multiple laboratories.
- Public health interventions
- Infection control matters. Use of masks.
- Virology skills and infectious diseases expertise in Australia appears to be limited or declining.
- Clinical management
- Cost benefit of hospital versus home treatment.
- Utilisation of stockpiles.
- Vaccines
- Need for long-term projects to develop broadly reactive vaccines that will protect against all influenza subtypes: If they are used against a pandemic strain, they may not be able to stop infection but could save lives.
- Pandemic vaccines: issues including yields, dose of vaccine, strain coverage, testing.
- How to increase seasonal influenza vaccine uptake to increase production capacity.
- Veterinary issues
- The alternative approach to tackling potential pandemics from a human health basis would be to resolve the problem in the avian populations, for example, easily administered, cheap, efficacious vaccines for poultry.
- Other
- Modellers need more facts on host-virus interactions to test their models and make them more robust.
TGA open day
An open day was held at the TGA building in Symonston, ACT, on 20 August 2006 in association with National Science Week and the Australian Science Festival.
The day ran from 10am to 4pm and included laboratory tours and displays from a variety of work units. Over 500 visitors attended, with the laboratory tours proving extremely popular.
Feedback from visitors was very positive.
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