By Brenda Goodman HealthDay Reporter

WEDNESDAY, May 29 (HealthDay News) -- Gene therapy that turns cells in the nose into factories that crank out super antibodies against the flu protected mice and ferrets against lethal doses of several pandemic strains of the virus.

If the approach works in humans, it could offer several important advantages over flu vaccines, said study author Dr. James Wilson, a professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia.

Because the therapy can be made ahead of time and fights many different strains, it might give doctors a faster way to thwart flu pandemics.

Currently, doctors race to identify dangerous new types of flu. They then have to develop a vaccine that targets the new strain. The vaccine is then grown in chicken eggs and tested for safety. It takes between three and six months to manufacture large quantities of vaccines against the flu.

"By the time we realize it's a potential pandemic, it's too late," Wilson said. "The timeliness of deploying the seasonal flu vaccine approach for pandemics is not the best way to go."

Vaccines, which prime the body to remember to attack incoming pathogens, also don't do the best job of protecting people who have diminished immune function, such as seniors and those with chronic health problems.

The new treatment, which is delivered through a nasal spray, gets around that problem because it doesn't require the body to mount an immune attack.

Instead, the nasal spray contains many copies of small, harmless viruses called adeno-associated viruses. The simple genome of these viruses can be altered in the lab to carry instructions for making special proteins called broadly neutralizing antibodies.

Broadly neutralizing antibodies are rare super antibodies that are capable of disarming many kinds of flu strains.

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Gene therapy may protect against flu pandemics