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April 09, 2003

INTERNATIONAL IMMUNIZATION NEWS

"Flu That Likes the Cold Might Make Safer Vaccines"

Reuters Health Information Services (www.reutershealth.com) (04/07/03); Pincock, Stephen

A British research team, led by Dr. Alison Whiteley from the University of Reading, reported to members of the Society for General Microbiology that they have been engineering flu viruses that are unable to grow at warm human or bird body temperatures, which will enable the quicker and safer production of vaccines.  Whiteley stated that researchers are usually at perilously high risk from infection especially when trying to produce large quantities of vaccine, so their reverse genetics process allows them to safely engineer viruses that prosper only in cold temperatures (37 degrees Celsius).  This is in sharp contrast to the conventional genetics approach in which researchers look for a mutant strain with the characteristics they want and then figure out how the genes changed.  Whiteley et al. are basing their work on the mutations identified in a cold-adapted strain of influenza developed by other researchers, to see if the same genetic engineering can be used in the A/PR/8 strain commonly used in vaccines.

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