Entries tagged with “caterpillar swine flu virus” from Bugs in the News
Maybe "saving all of humanity" would be a stretch - but it's certainly possible that they will help keep many from getting ill this coming flu season. A Meriden, Connecticut company is using cells from caterpillar ovaries in the creation of a vaccine for H1N1 flu (stop calling it Swine flu!!) and other influenza viruses. "FluBlok" is the name of the antibiotic-free, thimerisol-free cell-culture vaccine being created in quantity for the late 2009/2010 flu season. This technology replaces the use of chicken embryos to grow the virus. To be specific it isn't the chick embryo itself, but the chrorioallantoic membrane that is used. Umm, yeah what is that? It's just the "skin" surrounding the yolk thats full of vascular tissue. 
But why the change in technology? The downside of growing viruses with chicken embryos is almost obvious: you have to grow a ton of eggs, make sure each has a developing embryo that was injected with the virus in question, then harvested in 11-days. The membrane with grown virus is then processed and eventually injected into your arm. Vaccines made this way have to include preservatives and antibiotics to keep the nutrient-rich compound from growing anything else, like bacteria.
The cell-based culture for viruses is not new. A study published way back in 1946 in the "Journal of Immunology" compared the use of chicken embryo and cells from mouse brains. In 1999, another comparative study was conducted on the two growing methods for the "Fowl Pox" vaccine. Of course, there have been scores of studies and research but until now, the funding for creating a vaccine from caterpillar gonads has been limited. The ovarian cells are used presumably because these cells grow rapidly (so do ours - that's you have to wear that giant lead apron over your gonads when going for a non-groin region x-ray). The rapid growth of the cells, ease in which they are obtained, cultured and our insatiable need for flu vaccine will likely propel this technology forward. I think I smell an investment - or perhaps that's just aerosolized swine flu? Okay, that was bad.
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