Richard J. Webby.

• Localización: Scientific American, ISSN 0036-8733, Vol. 291, Nº. 6, 2004, págs. 51-51
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Focuses on the creation of methods for making influenza vaccines by Richard J. Webby, an assistant faculty member of the department of infectious diseases, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Memphis, Tenn. Every year medical authorities recommend that people get a flu shot--notwithstanding the facts that the vaccine is sometimes in short supply or turns out to be for the wrong strain.Those problems stem in part from the need for vaccine makers to predict nearly a year in advance which flu strains may be abundant and how many vaccine doses to prepare. The technique was developed by Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and further refined by Robert Webster and Erich Hoffman of St. Jude hospital. That groundwork enabled him to quickly create another avian flu strain for the 2004 season, in collaboration with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the British National Institute for Biological Standards and Control. The method cuts two to three months off the normal time needed to derive a vaccine strain, which allows vaccine makers to wait longer to see which flu strain is likely to dominate the next season and perhaps even to produce a vaccine during a pandemic.