Influenza is a highly contagious, acute viral respiratory disease that occurs seasonally in most parts of the world. The infection resides primarily in the respiratory tract (nose, throat and bronchi), but causes both local and systemic symptoms including fever, chills, cough, headache, myalgia, sore throat, and malaise. Influenza-related pneumonia is the main complication of infection. Annual epidemics cause significant morbidity and mortality worldwide. Each year, influenza infections result in an average of 110,000 hospitalizations, approximately 20,000 of which result in death. These deaths are heavily concentrated (>90%) among persons who are at highest risk for influenza-related complications — elderly adults (over 65), children under age five, patients with pre-existing respiratory or cardiovascular disease, and women in the third trimester of pregnancy. Thus, the prevention of influenza virus infection is a major public health priority…
Tag: <span>vaccines</span>
Contract manufacturing of recombinant protein drugs and vaccines, as well as other biopharmaceuticals, has been the focus of considerable interest during the past decade. Fueled by a strong clinical development pipeline, primary manufacturing of biopharmaceuticals on a contract basis has attracted multinational industrial concerns willing to invest on the promise of potentially higher returns than are experienced in the production of traditional small molecule drugs. Biopharmaceutical contract manufacturers have made significant contributions to the development and subsequent commercialization of a few highly successful products. However, despite strong growth, consistent profitability has been elusive. The market has changed overr the past decade as customer projects progressed from process development through market launch. Now that several preeminent market players have successfully made the difficult transition from clinical to commercial supplier, what has been learned and how is the market expected to evolve over the next five years?…
The K562 cell line is a human myelogenous leukemic cell which has been used by several groups, including ours, as a vehicle for cell-based vaccines and immuno-gene therapies. The attractiveness of K562 cells is the ease with which they can be cultured, plus the fact that they express very low levels of MHC proteins. Low MHC expression facilitates the use of these cells in patients with different MHC backgrounds, and it may improve the in vivo survival of the cells by delaying immune rejection. Based largely on these properties, we have been developing the K562 cell line as a universal platform for expressing cytokines, tumor antigens, and other immuno-modulating proteins…
Globally, an estimated 36 million people are living with HIV, and some 20 million people have already died of AIDS. Today, there is still no HIV vaccine available. HIV virus-like particles are an attractive vaccine candidate due to their ability to induce both antibody and cytotoxic T-lymphocyte responses. In this article, we describe the development of a production process for an HIV particle vaccine, HIV-1 p55 (gag). The gag precursor protein (p55) is sufficient for assembly and cellular release of retrovirus-like particles. We expressed the p55 gag protein using the BEVS technology in Spodoptera frugiperda expresSF+ cells…