Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, May 31, 1995                   TAG: 9505310098
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: C-5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: NEW YORK                                LENGTH: Medium

FLU VACCINE WIDENS AIM

The standard flu vaccine has to be redesigned each year to counter new variants of the virus. But the new approach is designed to protect against many variants simultaneously, so one injection may work over several flu seasons.

Scientists from Merck Research in West Point, Pa., report on tests on ferrets in the June issue of the journal Nature Medicine.

``It looks like it works quite well,'' commented flu vaccine expert John Quarles of Texas A&M University in College Station.

In theory, he said, ``you probably increase the number of strains that you may be protected against, so you have to give it [the vaccine] not every year, maybe only occasionally.''

Merck researcher Dr. Margaret Liu cautioned that it is not clear whether the new approach would lead to fewer flu shots. Nobody knows whether protection from the new vaccine approach would last longer than one flu season, she said.

The new strategy is called a DNA vaccine. The same approach may be useful against HIV, the AIDS virus, which also comes in many variants, researchers said.

In a standard flu vaccine, a person is injected with dead virus or pieces of virus. The immune system then makes antibodies to proteins found on the surface of the virus, so if the real germ shows up, the antibodies latch on to those proteins and prevent infection.

In the new approach, the vaccine consists of selected genes for proteins that appear on the surface of the virus or inside the virus. The person's own body would then make the virus proteins.

Proteins from inside the virus are less likely than surface proteins to vary with different strains of virus, so they make a more consistent target.