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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."
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.
I have to admit I'm not up on my vegan dogma, but don't insects qualify as animals?
There was an old lady who swallowed a soy based non-GM fly like analogue?
Combine this with the story from earlier in the day. Problem solved.
Depends on the vegan. My brother will consume honey, but he is still a vegan.
"Don't meddle in the affairs of a patent dragon, for thou art tasty and good with ketchup." ~ohcrapitssteve
Real level 5 vegans don't eat anything that casts a shadow.
My brother will consume honey, but he is still a vegan.
I suspect some vegans might dispute that.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
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...
Each years flu vaccine is really just an educated guess on which flu will be going around that year. Most of the time it's just based on what was in the other hemisphere that year... it can be wrong so it's not a sure thing.
The only years I've ever gotten the flu are the two where I did _not_ get the flu shot..
There you go. Now neither of our data points is meaningful.
Let's see... on the one hand there's hundreds of years of scientific investigation and clinical studies into the pros and cons of vaccination, and on the other there's some guy on Slashdot with a (probably misremembered) anecdote... this is going to be a tricky one...
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
either you are a liar, had the virus before getting the shot, or what you had was some form of stomach distress and not influenza. Many think are 'flu like' but aren't influenza.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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.
"Flublok uses insect proteins instead of eggs"
So... no problem with free range eggs then?
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
How do you know bees don't suffer when they are smoked out of their colonies and their larval chambers are cut open and honey removed?
I was about to point out that many vegetables do cast a shadow until I looked up "level 5 vegan".
Good show.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Interesting point there. Do bees have faces?
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
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.
Thus, obviously, no, they don't.
Otherwise the summary would be wrong, and this is Slashdot...
Rethinking email
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-
Yeah, why are you posting AC?
Last i checked...
Neither the Vegan Society nor the American Vegan Society considers the use of honey, silk or other insect products to be suitable for vegans, while Vegan Action and Vegan Outreach regard it as a matter of personal choice
Honey is not bee poo, it's partially dehydrated chewed bee vomit. The pollen jock bee drinks the nectar and it is stored in the honey stomach and they return to the hive, the worker bee opens his mouth and the pollen jock bee vomits into the workers mouth. The worker bee then chews the vomited nectar for a half an hour which breaks down the nectar into simple sugars, the worker bees then spits the chewed nectar into multiple honeycombs so it can dry, other worker bees flap their wings in the hive to create airflow to dry the honey out even quicker.
Even though I know all of this I still love honey.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
The virus or the egg?