# 4151
Maryn McKenna, who pens the superb Superbug Blog, is a contributing writer for CIDRAP, and had just authored a piece on new vaccine technologies on the horizon.
The current egg-based technology, while `tried and true’, is poorly suited for dealing with a pandemic outbreak. It takes at least 6 months from the time a virus is isolated to having a vaccine begin to roll off the assembly line, and the yield is far less than we’d need during a severe pandemic.
First this update, then a reminder of some earlier McKenna articles.
New vaccine technologies on horizon but face roadblocks
Maryn McKenna
Contributing Writer
Dec 11, 2009 (CIDRAP News) – New ways of producing influenza vaccine that would free the process from long-standing problems are on the horizon, federal officials said today, but they added that scientific and regulatory hurdles will slow the products' movement past licensure and into the market.
Speaking at an educational seminar held on the campus of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and broadcast online, senior members of federal heath agencies acknowledged that production of both seasonal and pandemic H1N1 influenza vaccines has been hobbled by outdated egg-based technology.
"It will be several more years before we are able to wean ourselves away from egg-based vaccine, but we are committed to moving ahead with 21st century vaccine development," Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a taped opening statement.
Some of you may remember that on May 1st of this year, barely a week after the isolation of the novel H1N1 virus, Maryn McKenna wrote a piece for CIDRAP entitled:
Maryn gave us a sober analysis of the difficulties that vaccine producers would face, and was the first reporter I’m aware of to warn that the seed virus being developed by the CDC was not growing well in eggs.
And finally, there is probably no better overview of the problems inherent in the creation, production, and distribution of a vaccine than Maryn McKenna’s award winning 7-part series the Pandemic Vaccine Puzzle which she wrote for CIDRAP in 2007.
Part 1: Flu research: a legacy of neglect
Part 2: Vaccine production capacity falls far short
Part 3: H5N1 poses major immunologic challenges
Part 4: The promise and problems of adjuvants
Part 5: What role for prepandemic vaccination?
Part 6: Looking to novel vaccine technologies
Part 7: Time for a vaccine 'Manhattan Project'?
Bibliography
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