Egg allergy and flu vaccine

[CMdeux]

Hey, though-- HERE is some HUGE news--

FDA approval for cell-culture production of Flu vaccine.


Rapidly Produced Flu Vaccine Wins F.D.A. Approval

It's made using sf9 cells.  These are an insect cell line that is commonly used to produce mammalian proteins using an insect virus as an amplification system.

(I've used this particular system myself to make recombinent proteins for further study, so I know precisely how it works.)

This is egg-free.  There are other proteins of concern used in the cell culture medium, however-- bovine proteins would be of particular concern, and possibly gelatin/other additives.

It's also potentially VERY fast-- much, much faster than the current outdated method of egg culture.

Because the cell line in question does NOT come from a mammalian system, there are far fewer reasonable risks associated with this.  I'd be comfortable with it in a way that green monkey kidney cell lines were never going to make me comfy.  (You're injecting something produced in an immortalized cell line, so...  mostly these are aggressive tumor cell lines.  Theoretically, there should be no residual cellular material remaining after purification... but.)


But I digress.  This is AWESOME news.  It's actually really awesome news for EVERYONE-- because vaccine produced this way is infinitely scalable, and production can start LATER, meaning better matches for circulating strains, meaning that more people are BETTER immunized each season.  This is FANTASTIC news.     

[PurpleCat]

DD has gotten the flu shot at her pediatrician's the past 2 years.  We wait in the waiting room for 30 minutes after the shot.  She has done wonderfully.  She was able to just get the straight shot at her peds because she tolerated baked egg in a challenge.  Otherwise, I think Hopkins would have advised us to have them administer it.

Exactly us except not Hopkins!

[MandCmama]

Allergist out of flu vaccine 
On an equally frustrating note, Ds2 is allergic to dogs and everything that grows/blooms in our state!