EAST LANSING, Mich., July 10 (UPI) -- U.S. researchers say newly developed technology may produce human flu vaccines more quickly and cheaply than current methods.
While studying new techniques to produce vaccines for Marek's disease -- a common chicken disease -- Michigan State University Professor Paul Coussens and colleagues found a cell line that had intriguing potential for growing flu virus.
Building on work done by graduate student Amin Abujoub and Assistant Professor David Reilly, Coussens and colleagues found the cell line would grow nearly every type of flu virus: avian, swine, equine and human.
In cell culture-based vaccine production, scientists infect cells with flu strains. Then they grow the virus in large vats or bioreactors. The virus is subsequently killed and the purified viral structure is used to make the vaccine.
Growing virus in cell culture could dramatically speed up flu vaccine production, which, for 50 years, has been made by injecting 11-day-old fertilized chicken eggs with a flu virus strain. The virus grows in the eggs and is then killed and purified to make the vaccine. That time-consuming process requires 270 million or more eggs to produce a vaccine supply for the United States.
