Virus-Like Particles May Mean Speedier Flu Vaccines

We've been talking a lot lately about flu vaccines. Now an anonymous reader sends us to a Technology Review piece on two human trials involving so-called virus-like particle vaccines, which promise to be much faster to churn out than traditional vaccines. (Here's a single-page version but without the useful illustration.) VLP vaccines use a protein shell, grown in either plant or insect cells, that look just like real viruses to the body's immune system but that contain no influenza RNA genetic material. A company called Medicago grows its VLPs in transgenic tobacco plants, while another called Novavax uses "immortalized" cells taken from caterpillars. Providing they pass safety muster, both techniques should be able to produce an influenza vaccine more quickly than current methods, using just the DNA of the virus.

Comments

Flu !DNA

[Red Flayer]

Providing they pass safety muster, both techniques should be able to produce an influenza vaccine more quickly than current methods, using just the DNA of the virus.

Sorry to nitpick, but influenza is an RNA virus, not a DNA virus.

I have no clue if this makes a difference in how quickly a vaccine could be made using this technique, but I just needed to get the "Friday Pedantry" out of the way.

Re:I'm surprisde no one's done this before

[ColdWetDog]

since antibodies react to proteins or other structures and not the RNA/DNA. Maybe profits on vaccines aren't really there?

Or, alternatively, they've been trying for a long time without success. FTFA:

VLPs have been an around-the-corner promise for over 20 years. But they've now reached a stage at which even disinterested observers believe, as Columbia University virologist Vincent Racaniello put it, that VLP vaccines "really seem to be coming into their own."

But don't roll up your sleeve just yet. Sounds a lot like holographic storage, Duke Nukem Forever, better batteries, flying cars, jet packs, sensible women.