Virus-like particles could speed response to pandemics

Issue Date: January 20, 2010

A method of producing vaccines from insect cells instead of chicken eggs may allow increased speed and safety in responding to pandemics, according to researchers. The technique avoids problems such as contamination, slow growth of isolates, and allergies to egg proteins, one researcher said.

“Pandemic influenza vaccines can theoretically be produced within weeks after the first isolation of the RNA sequence of a new emerging influenza strain,” said Florian Krammer, MSc, a researcher at the Vienna Institute of BioTechnology, part of the University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences in Vienna, Austria. Dr. Krammer is first author of a paper describing the technique (Krammer F, Nakowitsch S, Messner P, et al. [Published online ahead of print December 29, 2009.] Biotechnol J).

Krammer and colleagues worked under senior author and lead researcher Reingard Grabherr, PhD, to produce H1N1 influenza recombinant virus-like particles (VLPs) in insect cells. They showed that these VLPs, which lack viral nucleic acid, induced an immune response in mice.

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