AlaskaDenise
In Memoriam
http://memphis.bizjournals.com/memphis/stories/2006/03/27/daily29.html
St. Jude technology to help stop spread of avian flu in France
Memphis Business Journal - 3:49 PM CST Thursday
A virus technology from St. Jude has been licensed to inoculate poultry for avian flu, which could be the first step in a revolution in how human vaccines are manufactured.
Erich Hoffmann, from the Division of Virology at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, developed a technique to reverse engineer viruses, breaking them down into their eight basic components. From there it's a relatively simple process to reassemble the virus, but substitute some of the components and create a vaccine.
Most vaccines today are grown in chicken eggs and can take eight months to produce. Faced with a fast-moving virus such as the H5N1 bird flu, that's too slow to stop an outbreak. Hoffmann's technique allows scientists to identify the target virus and engineer a vaccine in short order. At industrial levels it could mean vaccines tailored to the threat, ready in a few weeks.
With H5N1 spreading through poultry across Europe, the French National Agency of Veterinary Medicine has approved the use of Poulvac in treating poultry to prevent their infection. Poulvac was developed in a collaboration between St. Jude, the University of Wisconsin and Fort Dodge Animal Health, a division of Wyeth (NYSE: WYE).
Poulvac is made from parts of three different viruses, including a neutered component of H5N1, which stimulates the immune system to build antibodies against it.
Hoffmann's technology takes one of the most dreaded aspects of flu virus and turns it against the flu. In nature, different virus strains will trade components in a process known as reassortment. The fear over H5N1 is that it is brutally virulent and lethal. If a person infected with another strain of flu picked up H5N1, the viruses would begin swapping parts, and possibly build a version of bird flu that spreads fast, kills rapidly and can infect humans.
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So this is an engineered VAX based on circulating strains? I thought the livestock industry already had these.
.
St. Jude technology to help stop spread of avian flu in France
Memphis Business Journal - 3:49 PM CST Thursday
A virus technology from St. Jude has been licensed to inoculate poultry for avian flu, which could be the first step in a revolution in how human vaccines are manufactured.
Erich Hoffmann, from the Division of Virology at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, developed a technique to reverse engineer viruses, breaking them down into their eight basic components. From there it's a relatively simple process to reassemble the virus, but substitute some of the components and create a vaccine.
Most vaccines today are grown in chicken eggs and can take eight months to produce. Faced with a fast-moving virus such as the H5N1 bird flu, that's too slow to stop an outbreak. Hoffmann's technique allows scientists to identify the target virus and engineer a vaccine in short order. At industrial levels it could mean vaccines tailored to the threat, ready in a few weeks.
With H5N1 spreading through poultry across Europe, the French National Agency of Veterinary Medicine has approved the use of Poulvac in treating poultry to prevent their infection. Poulvac was developed in a collaboration between St. Jude, the University of Wisconsin and Fort Dodge Animal Health, a division of Wyeth (NYSE: WYE).
Poulvac is made from parts of three different viruses, including a neutered component of H5N1, which stimulates the immune system to build antibodies against it.
Hoffmann's technology takes one of the most dreaded aspects of flu virus and turns it against the flu. In nature, different virus strains will trade components in a process known as reassortment. The fear over H5N1 is that it is brutally virulent and lethal. If a person infected with another strain of flu picked up H5N1, the viruses would begin swapping parts, and possibly build a version of bird flu that spreads fast, kills rapidly and can infect humans.
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So this is an engineered VAX based on circulating strains? I thought the livestock industry already had these.
.