Good News About Flu Production

One of the problem with influenza vaccine production (as well as some other vaccines) is that the vaccine is made by injecting into chicken eggs--infecting chicken embryos--and then harvesting and killing the virus for use in the vaccine. This is a very time-consuming process that takes months. A holy grail of influenza vaccine production has been a cell-culture based production method, since this would allow much faster production of virus (and thus vaccine).

It sounds like this will soon become reality:

Novartis said it won approval in Germany for a swine flu vaccine that's made in cell cultures, rather than in chicken eggs. That's pretty significant, because most vaccines (including those for swine flu) are grown in eggs, a decades-old technique that can't be scaled up very quickly (you need millions of eggs). Novartis is already licensed to sell a seasonal flu vaccine grown in cell culture.

The vaccine will be manufactured at a plant in Germany, though Novartis is also close to completing a cell-culture vaccine plant in the U.S., Dow Jones Newswires notes.

It won't be ready in time to deal with TEH SWINEY FLOO!!, but this is great news, nonetheless.