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Maryn McKenna continues her outstanding series on the Pandemic Vaccine Puzzle on the CIDRAP (Center for Infections Disease Research & Policy) website.
Part IV, The Promise and Problems of Adjuvants was posted late yesterday.
THE PANDEMIC VACCINE PUZZLE
Part 4: The promise and problems of adjuvantsMaryn McKenna
Contributing Writer
Editor's note: This is the fourth in a seven-part series investigating the prospects for development of vaccines to head off the threat of an influenza pandemic posed by the H5N1 avian influenza virus. The series puts promising advances in vaccine technology in perspective by illuminating the formidable barriers to producing large amounts of an effective and widely usable vaccine in a short time frame. Part 3 discussed the immunologic challenges posed by the H5N1 virus, including its poor immunogenicity when incorporated in vaccines and the difficulty of assessing immune responses to the vaccines.
Oct 30, 2007 (CIDRAP News) – Adjuvanted vaccines appear to hold the greatest promise for solving the grave supply-demand imbalance in pandemic influenza vaccine development. They come with obstacles—immunologic, regulatory, and commercial—but they also have generated more excitement than any other type of vaccine thus far.
In an example of the hope being hung on adjuvants, the WHO last week issued a statement declaring that the pandemic vaccine supply is "sharply" increasing and forecasting that annual manufacturing capacity will rise to 4.5 billion two-dose courses by 2010 (see Bibliography: WHO 2007: Projected supply). The forecast is based on the expectation that flu vaccines made in 2010 will include an adjuvant permitting the use of just one-eighth of current vaccines' antigen content. (Adjuvants are chemicals that are incorporated in some vaccines to improve response to the vaccines' active ingredient. Adjuvants make it possible to reduce the dose of antigen in a vaccine without dampening the immune response.)
SophiaZoe, back to blogging, has been on a roll this week. She tackles the adjuvant issue from a slightly different angle than Ms. Mckenna, focusing more on safety concerns than regulatory issues.
Drawing heavily on the writings of SusanC of the Wiki, a medical doctor, she outlines the concerns that adjuvants may induce unwanted autoimmune responses.
A Journey Through The World of Pandemic Influenza
October 30, 2007
The Pandemic Vaccine Puzzle Part IV
CIDRAP's Part IV of their series The Pandemic Vaccine Puzzle "The Promise and Problems of Adjuvants", Maryn McKenna contributing writer, has now been posted.
In the interest of full disclosure I will admit that the concept of adjuvants used on the general population scares the you know what out of me.
(Cont.)
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