GAITHERSBURG, Md. -- A local company hopes to help solve one of the biggest challenges in preparing for pandemic flu. It wants to solve the problem of a vaccine shortage with a simple patch.

The H5N1 virus has killed millions of birds around the world and several people too, raising fears about a possible worldwide flu pandemic.

VIDEO: Company Works To Solve Pandemic Flu Problem

Doctors said one of the best ways to save lives in the case of a pandemic is having a vaccine on hand. But, there simply is not enough capacity to make vaccine for everyone in the United States.

Now Lomai, a biopharmaceutical company in Gaithersburg, Md., is working on a way to stretch the vaccine supply.

“What normally would have been 10 million doses could be 100 million or 500 million; then you solved the problem,” said Stan Erck, one of the company's founders.

The product is a simple skin patch. A person would get a flu shot, and then the patch would be placed on top of the injection site instead of a bandage.

“It really revs up the immune response,” said Dr. Gregory Glenn, who helped develop the patch.

The active ingredient in the patch is a powerful protein that alerts the body's immune system to start working overtime in response to the vaccine, and a special material keeps the protein in place.

“We're just exploiting normal immune mechanisms in the skin. We're using bacterial products that look dangerous to the immune system, and that results in a much stronger immune response to whatever you inject,” Glenn said.

Glenn also said the patch could help solve another huge potential problem in developing a pandemic flu vaccine.

“If the flu strain changes from today's H5N1, the strain running around to something else, our patch can be used with any flu vaccine,” he said.

Doctors said human trials of the pandemic patch could begin soon.

Lomai has been working on the patch technology for years. It's received a multimillion-dollar grant from the National Institutes of Health to continue its efforts.