Cool new vaccine technology

The people at Protein Sciences Corporation recently announced a new way to make Flu vaccines. From this article at Forbes:

New Strategy Speeds Flu Vaccine Production
Researchers say they've developed a commercially viable process that could enable the mass production of flu vaccines within weeks, instead of the months it now takes.

This approach uses a purified protein from the surface of a virus called hemagglutinin (the "H" in a virus' designation -- for example -- the H5N1 bird flu virus) to trigger an immune response to a specific strain of virus.

The genes responsible for production of hemagglutinin are inserted into a pathogen called a baculovirus, which are then used to infect specific host cells. Those infected cells produce recombinant hemagglutinin (rHA).

Phase II clinical trials show that the vaccines produced using this method are safe and trigger an immune response equal to or greater than conventional chicken egg-based vaccines.

The researchers say they've successfully produced rHA from four strains of influenza that may trigger a pandemic -- H5, H7, H9 and H2 -- at levels where the cost of vaccine manufacturing would be equal to, or less than, that of traditional egg-based vaccines.

Very interesting -- they have a product: FluBl�k� in PhaseII/III testing and is expected to come to market in 2007. Useful for a lot of other strains too if they can find a good virus carrier. Flu is the one to work on for now though.