Originally published by the Voice of America (www.voanews.com).
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April 14, 2007

Bypassing Eggs, Flu Vaccine Grown in Insect Cells Shows Promise
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http://enews.voanews.com/t?ctl=17105F9:A6F02AD83191E16032709BCCEAB62C759574F7DCC14957C0 New
technique is said to be safer, faster and as effective





An experimental flu vaccine does not require eggs, which is where
typically the current flu vaccine is grownThe vaccine against
influenza is typically grown in chicken eggs. But an experimental
vaccine made in insect cells appears to be as safe and effective as
conventional vaccines.

In research led by John Treanor of the University of Rochester Medical
Center in New York, an insect virus known as baculovirus was used to
grow key components of the flu virus in cells originally derived from
caterpillars. Treanor says it's safer than the current approach, which
uses live flu virus. "Working with the live pandemic virus to make
vaccines carries with it some risk that you won't contain it well," he
says, explaining the risk can be lessened somewhat by manipulating the
viruses so they're not so pathogenic. "But the nice thing about the
baculovirus approach is that there's no influenza involved at all,
it's just the gene for the important vaccine antigen."

It also does not require eggs, which could be in short supply as the
world faces the threat of pandemic bird flu.

Treanor says another advantage of using insect cells is speed; the new
method is





John Treanor, M.D., is a leading investigator of vaccines for bird flu
and other diseases quicker. "You might get to the point where you had
the vaccine in vials ready to administer to people a few weeks earlier
using this approach, rather than the traditional approach," he says,
adding "that's useful because there's a very limited window of
opportunity to get people vaccinated every year, and even saving just
a few weeks could have an impact of vaccination programs."

The vaccine was tested on a small group of healthy volunteers, ages 18
to 49. The researcher says, "If you compare the number of people who
got flu in the placebo group, people who had not been vaccinated, with
the number of people who got the flu in the vaccine group, the vaccine
reduces the rate of flu by 85%." That compares favorably to what you
might see with the regular flu shot.

Treanor says the next step is to repeat the study with a larger group
of subjects. Results of the initial study appear in the current issue
of the Journal of the American Medical Association.


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