From Medscape:The half-century-old egg-based method of producing flu vaccine has major limitations: a lengthy 6 to 9-month manufacturing process and the need to forecast and select the virus strains to be used in the vaccine at least six months ahead of the flu season, not to mention the annual demand for hundreds of millions of fertilized chicken eggs.
In place of eggs, the nearly $1 billion Novartis plant is using laboratory-grown mammalian cells that are capable of hosting a growing virus. Cell culture-based vaccines are already approved for use in some European countries.
References:
Influenza Vaccines for the Future - NEJM, 2010 http://goo.gl/cPIgz
Most egg-allergic children can be vaccinated with a low ovalbumin influenza vaccine without prior vaccine testing http://goo.gl/VA7Xt
Most egg-allergic children can be vaccinated with a low ovalbumin influenza vaccine without prior vaccine testing http://goo.gl/VA7Xt
2014 update: Influenza Vaccine and Egg Allergy: Nearing the End of an Evidence-based Journey http://buff.ly/1tHY0wd
Image source: Medium white eggs in carton, Wikipedia, M. Chambers, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License.
Image source: Medium white eggs in carton, Wikipedia, M. Chambers, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License.
