RE: Nouvelles >>> News >>> A question I have to ask is: H5N1 has been around for how many years and Medicago just received positive test results for a Phase 1 trial and is looking at another few? months for a phase 2 trial. How is this a fast process. See this extract from another post:
"The vaccine is made using a particle found in tobacco plants. Most current vaccines are made using chicken egg cells, which could become tricky if a bird flu pandemic breaks out. Carter says the virus-like particle in tobacco plants can be quickly changed to adapt to new bird flu strains."
"The response [to a new strain] should be much quicker than egg-based vaccines," he says. "In the case of a bird flu, producing a vaccine using eggs is not the smartest thing to do, because the flu can be lethal to the egg cells."
It seems to me that in this business nothing is fast or quick. It takes years ... yet people are looking at Medicago to all of a sudden have a vaccine available for the new H7N9 virus strain. How could that happen?