ST. LOUIS – Saint Louis University wants to pay you to catch the flu.

The university’s Center for Vaccine Development is recruiting people for a study into pre-existing flu immunity in healthy adults.

“By the time we are adults, we have been infected with the flu many times,” said Daniel Hoft, M.D., Ph.D., director of SLU’s Vaccine Center and principal investigator of the study. “While we have learned a lot about how the flu infects people, it is hard to know exactly when someone is exposed to the flu, and what happens early on after they are exposed to the flu but before they become sick.”

The vaccine center will recruit 12 healthy adults between the ages of 18 and 45 who have not received a vaccine within 30 days prior to enrolling in the study. Participants will be infected with influenza A H3N2 virus via a nasal spray and stay at the university’s Extended Stay Research Unit for at least 10 days.

Researchers will test the participants’ antibodies both before and after receiving the nasal spray to see how their immune systems respond. The subjects cannot leave until discharged and visitors will not be permitted.

Participants must live within 60 miles of St. Louis.

“Flu ‘challenge’ studies, where we give a strain of the flu virus to a participant, allow us to follow people closely before and after infection. We learn about the flu virus and the body’s reaction to it,” Holt said. “This study may help us to design better flu vaccines or better drugs to treat the flu.”

Participants will be compensated for their time and receive up to $3,425 for all study visits and phone calls.

Anyone interested in participating in the clinical trial should contact the SLU Center for Vaccine Development at 314-977-6333 or by email at vaccine@slu.edu.

The clinical trial is funded by Saint Louis University’s Stephen C. Peiper and Zi-Xuan Wang Institute for Vaccine Science and Policy. The institute was launched in 2020 following a significant financial investment from the couple. Peiper is a graduate of the SLU School of Medicine (Class of 1977).