CHICAGO, (Reuters) – Even as U.S. officials this week awaited the arrival of a sample of the new bird flu virus from China – typically the first step in making a flu vaccine – government-backed researchers had already begun testing a “seed” strain of the virus made from the genetic code posted on the Internet.
This new, faster approach is the result of collaboration among the U.S. government, vaccine maker Novartis and a unit of the J. Craig Venter Institute, which is using synthetic biology – in which scientists take the genetic code of the virus and use it as a recipe to build the virus from scratch.
It was an idea born in the aftermath of the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, in which production delays and poor-quality seed strain slowed delivery of the vaccine until October, late enough that people were already sick with swine flu.
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