tetano
Editor, Senior Moderator
In 2009, a global collaboration of scientists, public health agencies, and companies raced to make a vaccine against a pandemic influenza virus, but most of it wasn't ready until the pandemic had peaked. Now, researchers have come up with an alternative, faster strategy for when a pandemic influenza virus surfaces: Just squirt genes for the protective antibodies into people's noses. The method?which borrows ideas from both gene therapy and vaccination, but is neither?protects mice against a wide range of flu viruses in a new study.
James Wilson, a leading gene therapy researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, credits the idea to a meeting with Bill Gates in April 2010. Wilson had studied whether a harmless gene therapy tool called adeno-associated virus (AAV) can serve as a gene delivery vehicle to treat inherited diseases like cystic fibrosis and hemophilia. Gates, whose foundation focuses on global health, "asked me whether the AAV-mediated approach could be used in the context of a pandemic or emerging infection," Wilson recalls.
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http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2013/05/gene-therapy-against-the-flu.html?rss=1
James Wilson, a leading gene therapy researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, credits the idea to a meeting with Bill Gates in April 2010. Wilson had studied whether a harmless gene therapy tool called adeno-associated virus (AAV) can serve as a gene delivery vehicle to treat inherited diseases like cystic fibrosis and hemophilia. Gates, whose foundation focuses on global health, "asked me whether the AAV-mediated approach could be used in the context of a pandemic or emerging infection," Wilson recalls.
..
http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2013/05/gene-therapy-against-the-flu.html?rss=1