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Egg-free Flu Vaccines Provide Faster Pandemic Response
eggboard writes "Jen A. Miller has an egg allergy of a variety that her doctor has told her could produce a severe reaction if she were vaccinated for the flu, as flu vaccines are grown from viral strains incubated in chicken eggs. But, she explains, two new approaches have been approved by the FDA and are in production that don't use eggs at all; they're on the market in small amounts already, but will be available in much larger quantities soon. It's not just about egg allergies: the new vaccine types (one relying in insect proteins and the other on animal proteins) provide a much faster turnaround time in response to flu pandemics — as little as two to three months from isolation of a strain to mass production instead of at least six months with eggs."
http://slashdot.org/?nobeta=1
My sister is currently suffering from the flu; she works at a pharmacy, so is exposed to a lot of sick people, but had an allergic reaction to previous flu shots, so she couldn't be vaccinated.
That's terrible. Now how are we supposed to knock out the vegans?
Combine this with the story from earlier in the day. Problem solved.
The only years I've ever gotten the flu is when I cave and get a flu shot. "well that means you allready had it before the shot!" sure thing pal.
I know that I'm missing the human-interest angle of the story here, but as someone who works at a company that has performed some large-scale DNA vaccine production research (Vandalia Research, but please don't google us because the website is an embarrassment), I'm a little disappointed that the article didn't try harder to explain the difference between these new vaccines and the old egg-grown ones. I think a little science education is a good thing to provide, to pull back the curtain on the good that genetic engineering can do. The first-pass explanation was "Flublok uses insect proteins instead of eggs. (The other is Flucelvax, which relies on animal proteins.)" which is rather poor since the proteins don't replace the eggs, the insect/animal culture cells those proteins are grown in do. I don't expect an in-depth discussion of promoters or vectors, but more about the recombinant engineering involved than "insect cells are used to cultivate hemagglutinin" would be nice. For anyone interested in a more academic explanation of Flublok's approach, along with several other possible vaccine design strategies that will hopefully be coming soon, a good page to read would be http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...
I actually manufactured one of these drugs. Any questions?
You probably know whether or not you are allergic to eggs. How many people know whether or not they are allergic to grasshoppers?
Stupider like a fox! - H.S.
slashdot hates eggs.
"Flublok uses insect proteins instead of eggs"
I received the Flublok vaccine several months ago, having sought it out due to a egg allergy. Paid around ~$30 at my local pharmacy, and had to wait a few days after my initial inquiry, for them to get it in stock. While my allergy is mild, the traditional flu vaccine still leaves me with mild muscle aches and malaise that lasts for several days.
As a medical student, I am required receive the flu vaccination each year (exemptions for certain severe reactions only). This year's flu vaccination was the easiest ever -- over the next few days, there were no noticeable adverse reaction at all.
Great, now can they take out the mercury-based preservative too.
Not that it has been found to be harmful in any way when bonded in that form, but its removal would give a lot less fuel to idiotic anti-vaccination groups. I don't believe for a second that it would shut up such groups, but it would give uninformed Joe Public even less cause to listen to them.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Yeah, it was a puff piece written in first-person form, but this whole egg-free stuff actually gained momentum back in the 2001 and came to a tipping point back during the 2009 H1N1 pandemic scare...
Two of the first widely deployed cell-based, mono-valent flu vaccines (2009-H1N1-only) were Celtura (made by Novartis) and Celvapan (made by Baxter). The shortage of egg-based virus production during the 2009 H1N1 pandemic scare and the controversy over the use of adjuvant MF59 (e.g., in Pandemrix, an egg-based flu-vaccine developed as a supplemental flu shot that year) used to amp the immune response in order to *stretch/cut* the available virus production tended to obscure the difference between egg and cell-based vaccines to most of the public...
FWIW...
Novartis makes a few variants (Celtura, Optaflu, Flucelvax) grown in cells derived from the MDCK** line of cells.
Baxter makes another variant (Celvapan, Preflucel) grown in cells derived from the VERO*** line of cells.
Protein Sciences' FluBlok is quite different, though. An insect line (expresSF+) of cells is infected with a baculovirus which was GM-ed to encode the desired HA protein (e.g., a specific H1 flu-variant). No flu virus present.
**MDCK: cell line extracted by S. H. Madin, N. B. Darby from Canine (adult female cocker spaniel) Kidney tissue in September 1958.
***VERO: cell line extracted by Yasumura and Kawakita from a VErda (green) monkey RinO (kidney) tissue in March 1962.
expresSF+: private cell line isolated in 1983 by C. Cherry and G. Smith from some unknown mixture of cells originated from a fall armyworm (a type of caterpillar) started in 1970.
The parent post to this has a whole lot of specific information about the new generation of flu- vaccines --
There's much more specific stuff here than in the (rather vague) Russian review for which a link was put up earlier.
-wb-
They could get rid of the mercury.
NO, they didn't ever remove it. That is a common misconception. -- It is just at "trace levels" the FDA considers negligible. If you go preservative-free you still have to contend with Aluminum Hydroxide (its in most vaccines as is the only approved adjuvant that will enhance a vaccine's effectiveness. Unfortunately, the CDC pointed out that high doses of the stuff (just take any combo shot and you will reach it) can create neurological disorders as it easily passes the brain barrier interface.
So you could take the flu shot like I did this year, realizing that its directed at the likely candidates and you still have a 40% to %50 chance of getting the strain that is not in the shot, or you could get sick from the shot - like I did one year, or find out all the stuff you have been ingesting like the thousands of plastic chemicals floating in most people's bodies.
So is it worth it? For me not getting sick from the flu (and don't confuse it with a bad cold as most people do) it is.
I don't know if the verdict is out on that. What is different than the 1980s is the sheer volume of recommended shots by age 2. -- at least 2 orders of magnitude. When you couple that with these 5 in 1 shots that parents get their kids so they don't cry... and consider some of those shots have 2-3 strains so at the end of the day you might give 8 different dead viruses at once.
So you got to wonder how the immune system reacts to produce antibodies for so many of these dead viruses. That is something that hasn't been researched fully. There have been studies overseas that showed when they gave monkeys the full recommended CDC schedule some of the monkeys had neurological disorders. -- Though the study could be biased too for a witch hunt on vaccines. It is tough to say.
Personally I don't think its the vaccines, but simply a genetic predisposition when the immune system gets overwhelmed. Maybe many kids do fine and some don't
But how do you get it to stay classic when you go to read the comments on an article?
Last i checked...
What people NEED to do is to quit eating all the shit the FDA says is 'ok' to put in food.
When you eat real food, your immune system works the way it's supposed to in the first place. I used to get sick 4-6 times a year without fail. (40 years!)
I quit all processed food and switched to choosing my foods by my blood type in the last 3 years and I've been sick twice.
Keep it Clean! :D
The virus or the egg?