Virus-Like Particles May Mean Speedier Flu Vaccines 80
We've been talking a lot lately about flu vaccines. Now an anonymous reader sends us to a Technology Review piece on two human trials involving so-called virus-like particle vaccines, which promise to be much faster to churn out than traditional vaccines. (Here's a single-page version but without the useful illustration.) VLP vaccines use a protein shell, grown in either plant or insect cells, that look just like real viruses to the body's immune system but that contain no influenza RNA genetic material. A company called Medicago grows its VLPs in transgenic tobacco plants, while another called Novavax uses "immortalized" cells taken from caterpillars. Providing they pass safety muster, both techniques should be able to produce an influenza vaccine more quickly than current methods, using just the DNA of the virus.
Typical big media... (Score:0, Funny)
It's just like big media, which Slashdot is part of, to ignore the REAL story in the story
"immortalized" cells taken from caterpillars.
You guys are running around producing Immortal caterpillars and noone let me know? Bastards!
Re:Typical big media... (Score:3, Funny)
Well, I, for one, welcome...
Sorry. Just couldn't do it.
Here are the problems with immortal caterpillars... If they behead eachother, do they gain in strength? Do they ever turn into moths/butterflies, or do they maintain immortality by staying in caterpillar form?
I mean seriously, you're a caterpillar, and you're immortal. Do you forsake immortality by spinning a chrysalis just so so you can have sex, live for a few weeks, and then die?
These are the questions that keep me up at night (and coincidentally, prevent me from having sex while NOT providing any form of immortality).
Bonk bonk on the head (Score:4, Funny)
I explained traditional vaccines like this to my kids: "What they do is get some of bad viruses, we'll call them little monsters. So they clone these monsters (kids learn what cloning is from cartoons) and then bonk them in the head to make them all dizzy. Then they send these dizzy monsters into the village, which is your body. The villagers see the monsters and beat the Cheerios out of them, and then kick them out of the city. They also learn to recognize the monsters. So when the real monsters come, the ones that are not dizzy, the villagers know how to recognize them because they look just like the dizzy ones. That's how they know to find the monsters and kick them out."
Kid: "But daddy, why don't they just put up a Wanted poster?"
Me: "Uh, go ask your mom."
Re:Bonk bonk on the head (Score:3, Funny)
Are you a Nintendo game designer, by any chance?
Re:A new method of vaccine delivery? (Score:2, Funny)
The tobacco industry must be just jizzing about this.
WARNING: The Surgeon General has determined that NOT smoking this pack of Joe Camel the Flu Slayer(TM) may be hazardous to your health.