tetano
Editor, Senior Moderator
With the official dedication Dec. 12 of America?s first facility for making influenza vaccine in cell culture, the United States took a small but important step toward improved protection against the next flu pandemic, experts said.
But some question just how many weeks this new facility will shave off of the timeline for moving from a candidate pandemic vaccine strain to getting the vaccine into the arms of the American public. And by relying on an inherently old-fashioned approach to flu protection with limited effectiveness, some see this development as merely refining an archaic vaccine that is overdue for replacement by a newer and better method of immunoprotection against pandemic influenza.
"It?s a small, incremental step in preparedness, but the current hemagglutinin-antigen based vaccine really is inadequate for providing the kind of immunologic protection we need, and so anything you do to speed up the amount of [this type of] vaccine is only a marginal improvement in protecting against influenza," commented Michael T. Osterholm, Ph.D., professor in the school of public health and director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.
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http://www.familypracticenews.com/n...vaccine-plant-awaits-pandemic/9c7ccbeb96.html
But some question just how many weeks this new facility will shave off of the timeline for moving from a candidate pandemic vaccine strain to getting the vaccine into the arms of the American public. And by relying on an inherently old-fashioned approach to flu protection with limited effectiveness, some see this development as merely refining an archaic vaccine that is overdue for replacement by a newer and better method of immunoprotection against pandemic influenza.
"It?s a small, incremental step in preparedness, but the current hemagglutinin-antigen based vaccine really is inadequate for providing the kind of immunologic protection we need, and so anything you do to speed up the amount of [this type of] vaccine is only a marginal improvement in protecting against influenza," commented Michael T. Osterholm, Ph.D., professor in the school of public health and director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.
...
http://www.familypracticenews.com/n...vaccine-plant-awaits-pandemic/9c7ccbeb96.html