Synthetic biology hastens vaccine research
Source: Agencies |
April 14, 2013, Sunday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
EVEN as US officials this week awaited the arrival of a sample of the H7N9 bird flu strain from China - typically the first step in making a 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 a collaboration among the US 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.
It has shaved two weeks off the vaccine-making process. It will take five to six months to ramp up production, but even weeks could make a difference in the case of a potentially deadly flu pandemic, said Robin Robinson, director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority or BARDA.
"We'll take it," said Robinson, whose agency handles pandemic preparedness as part of the US Department of Health and Human Services. "If the virus turns out to be a tough one, that could be very important."
Soul searching
An especially deadly strain of bird flu in 2003 known as H5N1 had already raised the threat of a global pandemic, spurring more than US$2 billion in government contracts to shore up US flu vaccine manufacturing capabilities.
After the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, US health agencies gathered to do some soul searching. Representatives from BARDA, the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health looked for ways to speed up the process of making flu vaccines, Robinson said.
Robinson, who formerly headed the vaccines division at Novavax Inc, had seen the speed at which a vaccine could be made using synthetic biology during the 2003 outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome or SARS.So, in 2010, BARDA tapped Novartis, one of its vaccine partners, along with a company owned by Dr J. Craig Venter.
As a test drive for the new flu technology, in 2011 the government gave its partners the genetic sequence for a North American strain of H7N9, a similar virus to the one making people sick in China. In less than two weeks, Novartis and Venter's group were ready to make virus seed. Then the US asked its partners to make a real vaccine for a variant of swine flu known as H3N2 in the US Midwest last year. They produced virus seed in less than a week. So, when Chinese health authorities released the genetic sequence for H7N9 on March 30, US health officials decided to try the new technique.
Novartis and Venter's company, Synthetic Genomics Vaccines Inc, went to work and by April 4, they had synthetic DNA ready and had started to grow the virus, long before samples of the actual virus arrived from China on April 11.
The new process of building the virus based on its genetic code allows "almost guaranteed success," said Mike Shaw, who directs the influenza laboratory for the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Shaw said the CDC plans to take a vaccine candidate at least to the stage of human safety trials, a process that will take several months.
This new, faster approach is the result of a collaboration among the US 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.
It has shaved two weeks off the vaccine-making process. It will take five to six months to ramp up production, but even weeks could make a difference in the case of a potentially deadly flu pandemic, said Robin Robinson, director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority or BARDA.
"We'll take it," said Robinson, whose agency handles pandemic preparedness as part of the US Department of Health and Human Services. "If the virus turns out to be a tough one, that could be very important."
Soul searching
An especially deadly strain of bird flu in 2003 known as H5N1 had already raised the threat of a global pandemic, spurring more than US$2 billion in government contracts to shore up US flu vaccine manufacturing capabilities.
After the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, US health agencies gathered to do some soul searching. Representatives from BARDA, the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health looked for ways to speed up the process of making flu vaccines, Robinson said.
Robinson, who formerly headed the vaccines division at Novavax Inc, had seen the speed at which a vaccine could be made using synthetic biology during the 2003 outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome or SARS.So, in 2010, BARDA tapped Novartis, one of its vaccine partners, along with a company owned by Dr J. Craig Venter.
As a test drive for the new flu technology, in 2011 the government gave its partners the genetic sequence for a North American strain of H7N9, a similar virus to the one making people sick in China. In less than two weeks, Novartis and Venter's group were ready to make virus seed. Then the US asked its partners to make a real vaccine for a variant of swine flu known as H3N2 in the US Midwest last year. They produced virus seed in less than a week. So, when Chinese health authorities released the genetic sequence for H7N9 on March 30, US health officials decided to try the new technique.
Novartis and Venter's company, Synthetic Genomics Vaccines Inc, went to work and by April 4, they had synthetic DNA ready and had started to grow the virus, long before samples of the actual virus arrived from China on April 11.
The new process of building the virus based on its genetic code allows "almost guaranteed success," said Mike Shaw, who directs the influenza laboratory for the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Shaw said the CDC plans to take a vaccine candidate at least to the stage of human safety trials, a process that will take several months.
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