The first batch of 100 people will receive a clinical test of China's home-made bird flu vaccine, as was approved by the State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA) on Tuesday, according to a leading researcher on bird flu vaccine.
The vaccine has been tested on animals including minks, chickens, chick embryos, monkey cells and rats, and proved safe and effective, said Yin Weidong, board director and general manager of Sinovac Biotech, one of the developers of the bird flu vaccine under development.
The vaccine had been jointly developed by Sinovac Biotech and the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention for 21 months, targeting the current bird flu virus strain H5N1, according to Wednesday's Beijing News.
The clinical test aims to find out whether the vaccine is safe and effective for humans and the proper amount to produce immunity within the shortest time, he said.
Once the virus strain mutates, experts could substitute the core virus in the vaccine with the latest virus strain based on the prototype vaccine, he said.
Chinese researchers obtained the seed virus from the World Health Organization (WHO) and planted it in chick embryos in seven-day-old eggs. They then ensured the embryos grew normally in the eggs before the embryos were extracted after three days of growth.
"We have prepared 900,000 embryos planted with virus," he said.
Similar studies have been carried out in the United States, Japan and various European countries.
China has so far confirmed two human cases of bird flu. One victim in east China's Anhui Province died and the other in central China's Hunan Province has recovered.
(Xinhua News Agency November 23, 2005)
