Vienna Scientists Develop Alternative Swine Flu Vaccination From Insect Cells

Scientists from Vienna have reportedly developed a new technique for producing vaccines for H1N1, ‘swine flu’, based on insect cells. The research was published in the Biotechnology Journal, which reveals how influenza vaccines can be produced faster than through the traditional method of egg-based production.

Florian Krammer, co-author from the University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Science in Vienna, said: “Recent outbreaks of influenza highlight the importance of a rapid and sufficient vaccine supply for pandemic and inter pandemic strains. However, classical manufacturing methods for vaccines fail to satisfy this demand.”

The new method turns to insect cell based technology to create recombinant influenza virus-like particles (VLPs), which resemble virus particles but lack the viral nucleic acid, so they are not infectious.

Using insect cells also bypasses the disadvantages of egg-based production, such as limited production capacity, allergic reactions to egg proteins and biosafety issues.

“Our work demonstrates that recombinant influenza virus-like particles are a very fast, safe and efficient alternative to conventional influenza vaccines and represents a significant new approach for newly emerging influenza strains like swine-origin H1N1 or H5N1,” added Mr. Krammer.

Alois Jungbauer, journal editor, said: “Virus-like particles will be one solution to tackle the biological variability of influenza pandemics. Mutated strains can be quickly engineered. So in this respect the teams’ work is an extremely valuable contribution to modern vaccine production.”