With all the attention that potential bird flu is getting, it's nice to hear that some new methods of vaccine production are being looked into. They could speed things up considerably from the traditional, and somewhat archaic "chicken and egg" technology currently employed.
Several biotechnology companies are at work on a new and quicker way of making a flu vaccine they hope can replace one that requires people to be inoculated with the entire influenza virus. Their technique: extract just a few genes from the virus and inject it into people. The nascent technology, called DNA vaccines, is a form of gene therapy that proponents argue is the best way to overhaul a 50-year-old vaccine manufacturing system.
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