SCIENTISTS at Acambis are within months of starting tests on a breakthrough jab that could eradicate the threat of a pandemic influenza outbreak and offer lifetime protection against any strain of the virus.

The Cambridge-based biotech company, best known for its smallpox vaccine, will today announce a collaboration and licensing deal with a leading Belgian research institute to develop a one-off vaccine to protect against flu.

Acambis has discovered a protein that exists in every strain of flu to be discovered since the early 1900s. The protein is embedded deep within the make-up of the virus and does not appear to change, even as the virus mutates between animals and man.

The company believes that a vaccine targeting the protein, called M2, will capture any strain of the virus, laying the groundwork for a “Holy Grail” jab that would need to be given only once and that would protect against future pandemic outbreaks of the disease.

Under the tie-up, Acambis will share its science with the Flanders Interuniversity Institute for Biotechniology. The two partners intend to take a prototype of the treatment into clinical trials as early as next year, although specific details of the development programme are still under wraps.

The vaccine will guard against both major strains of influenza: the A strain, which kills around half a million people a year and which can mutate into a pandemic killer, and the B strain, a less virulent variety which hits one in five people each season.

Gordon Cameron, chief executive of Acambis, told The Times: “This collaboration gives us the opportunity to develop the ultimate vaccine that will protect against all strains of flu and that will cut down the need to make new vaccines each year to cope with new strains of the disease.”

The breakthrough comes amid fears that the world is long overdue a new flu pandemic. These strike on average once every 30 to 40 years, and governments are woefully unprepared for an outbreak.

The World Health Organisation has persistently cautioned that stockpiles of flu jabs are dangerously low. The organisation, which is concerned that a strain of bird flu currently circulating in Asia could jump to man, has warned that an outbreak could affect 20 per cent of the population and kill about eight million sufferers.

Governments rely on the WHO for guidance on flu immunisation programmes. Each year, vaccine makers develop a jab based on the three flu strains that WHO advisers believe are most likely to cause an epidemic. Acambis claims that its prototype vaccine might be stored indefinitely, cutting down the need to re-engineer the innoculation each year.

VIRUS THAT HITS ONE IN FIVE

In 1968, a strain of the virus, called Hong Kong flu, killed about one milllion people.

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