A universal flu vaccine would be effective against all strains and would not have to be administered annually.

The Flanders Interuniversity Institute for Biotechnology has entered into an agreement with the British company Acambis to undertake the universal vaccine project, led by Walter Fiers, Professor of Molecular Biology.

Researchers plan to incorporate elements that are identical in all human virus strains, which should make it effective against all future flu variants.

Annual Flu Shots May Be Eliminated

Currently, flu vaccinations have to be administered annually because the viruses change. A universal vaccine would not require annual renewal, because it would not be tailored to a particular strain.

New human influenza viruses emerge a few times every century. Initially, these altered viruses are extremely lethal, since no one has yet been able to build up antibodies against them.

On average, 10 percent to 20 percent of the world's population is infected by flu every year. This leads to 3 to 5 million hospitalizations and 250,000 to 500,000 deaths a year, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

Pandemics occur when the genetic material originating from a fowl-plague virus is mixed with that of a human influenza virus. This is why WHO has followed the recent outbreaks of type H5N1 avian influenza in the Far East with an extremely watchful eye.

Pandemic Inevitable

It is only a matter of time until the bird flu virus H5N1 mutates into a form that will be capable of human-to-human infection, say experts.

Even the most optimistic view predicts a bird flu pandemic that could result in at least two million deaths worldwide.

In the last century there was the Asian flu, the Hong Kong flu and -- worst of all -- the Spanish flu. During the period between 1917 and 1920, the latter struck more than 50 million victims.

The appearance of an altered flu virus calls for the development of a new vaccine in each instance. This is problematic because a suitable vaccine cannot be developed until a virus has been identified, and a virus cannot be identified until an epidemic is underway.

The development of a vaccine takes six to nine months -- and in that time, millions of deaths could occur.

A universal vaccine would eliminate the need to identify the next altered virus as a prerequisite to vaccine development. Consequently, vaccination programs could be underway long before the next pandemic might occur.