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June 04, 2003
U.S. IMMUNIZATION NEWS
Aussie, US Researchers Homing in on 'Smart' Flu
Vaccines
New research published in the Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences journal indicates that U.S. and Australian
scientists have discovered something that could result in the development of
smart vaccines for mutant forms of the influenza virus. Researchers from
Melbourne University and St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Tennessee
think they have enabled the development of a new class of vaccine through the
use of T-cells and the targeting of non-mutating proteins inside the flu virus.
We can now genetically modify the flu virus that we're interested in to examine
and dissect out the T-cell responses, explains University of Melbourne's Steve
Turner.
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-- Albert Einstein, letter to a friend, 1901
"I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves, and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education."
-- Thomas Jefferson, letter to William C. Jarvis, September 28, 1820
"What's the point of vaccination if it doesn't protect you from the unvaccinated?"
-- Sandy Gottstein
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