Two seasonal flu vaccines that use new technology approved within the past six months should help speed up the process. That same techonology can be used to make other vaccines, including one to protect against H7N9. And Dr. Robin Robinson of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), part of the Health and Human Services Department, says H7N9 is giving his department the chance for what he hopes will be a dry run.
“I think we are in a much better place than we were before the pandemic of 2009,” Robinson told NBC News. “We have some ongoing initiatives that are starting to provide real results.”
Most flu vaccines are made using technology that dates back to the 1940s. Doctors isolate the virus from a patient, combine it with another virus used to make the a “seed” for the vaccine, grow it in specially fertilized chicken eggs, strain it out and purify it – a process that takes months and that is fraught with dangers, not the least of which is contamination of the eggs.
Newer technology dumps the eggs. One new vaccine is grown in insect cells, and another is grown in cells taken from a single cocker spaniel’s kidney decades ago. That speeds things up a bit. And now scientists can make vaccine based on the genetic sequence, because they can make artificial genes in the lab.
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