A University of Nebraska-Lincoln virology research team has received a $4 million grant to develop a vaccine that can protect against multiple strains of bird flu – a virus health officials say could trigger the next pandemic.
The National Institutes of Health awarded funding to the director of the Nebraska Center for Virology, Dr. Eric Weaver, to continue research on a vaccine that may last decades. Weaver and his team's approach includes a comprehensive study of the flu virus' evolution from 1930 to 2021 – a key difference from traditional vaccine development.
"We do a computational analysis that looks at how the viruses evolved over the last century," Weaver said. "We use information from that to design a vaccine that will protect against all the different strains that have evolved."
The vaccine's delivery method also sets it apart. Rather than injecting the vaccine directly, Weaver's team loads it into a weakened common cold virus — a strategy he calls a Trojan horse. That cold virus carries the flu vaccine into the body's cells, triggering a stronger immune response than traditional shots.
"We take a common cold virus and attenuate it, so it doesn't cause any disease, and then we bury the genes for influenza in that virus," Weaver said. "It actually presents the vaccine for us."
That approach is key to activating both sides of the immune system: antibodies, which attack invaders in the bloodstream, and T-cells, which hunt down infected cells directly. Most commercial flu vaccines only activate the antibody side. Weaver said when both sides work together, they amplify each other, producing protection far stronger than either could alone.
"It's a synergistic response," Weaver said. "One plus one equals three or four instead of two."
Weaver said the combined response produces immunity four to 10 times greater than a commercial vaccine. Standard flu shots provide roughly two months of protection before immunity drops below a protective threshold. Weaver's vaccine aims to last decades.
The research is still pre-clinical, meaning all current work is focused on moving toward human trials. But early animal results are promising — pig studies showed immune responses lasting the full duration of the experiment, with computer models predicting protection extending more than a decade.
The five-year project will target four specific bird flu strains, H2, H5, H7 and H9, each of which has either already caused a pandemic in humans or carries the potential to do so. Weaver said his team will develop individual vaccines for each strain before combining them into a single universal vaccine. Weaver compared his goal to the chickenpox vaccine — a shot given in childhood that protects for decades rather than requiring an annual booster.
While the CDC says the current risk of widespread human transmission remains low, Weaver said sustained and consistent research is what separates being prepared from scrambling to catch up when a pandemic hits. He pointed to researchers who abandoned their specialties to chase pandemic funding during COVID as an example of what happens when science follows money instead of staying the course.
When COVID hit, Weaver said he stood in the hallway outside his lab with two graduate students and faced that same decision directly.
"If you guys want, we can redirect our expertise towards COVID-19," Weaver recalled telling them. "But what we're really good at is flu. Do we go chase the funding like everybody else, or do we stay and do what we do well? We decided we would just continue to do what we do well."
Weaver said that long-term commitment is what puts scientists in a position to respond when a threat emerges — and why he believes continuous study of these viruses matters even when the immediate risk appears low.
"The real primary goal is to make sure that we have vaccines in hand in case there is a pandemic or the indication of one," Weaver said.