ST PETERSBURG, November 14 (RIA Novosti, Olga Vtorova) - Current tests suggest that a vaccine to prevent bird flu could be industrially produced by February or March of next year, the director of the Russian Flu Research Center said Monday.

Oleg Kiselyov said the strain of the virus obtained by reverse genetics (the process of introducing mutations into a cloned DNA segment to investigate gene function) using a Vietnamese avian flu isolate and the vaccine testing program developed by the Flu Research Center, have been passed on to the Tarasevich State Monitoring Institute.

"To conclude this work effectively and obtain our own strain of the avian flu virus using Siberian isolates, we need sufficient financing to keep up the work rate," Kiselyov said.