Taiwan eyeing mass production of new bird flu vaccine |
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Fri, 13 Apr 2007 03:51
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CHUNAN, Taiwan (XFN-ASIA) - Taiwanese scientists are preparing to mass produce a bird flu vaccine developed using a novel cell-based technology to battle any possible epidemic of the deadly H5N1 virus, officials said.Starting from scratch, a team at the Vaccine Research and Development Centre of the National Health Research Institutes took just 13 months and 40 mln twd to develop the necessary expertise, team leader Pele Chong said.Unlike most countries or companies which use chicken eggs as a medium for cultivating their vaccines, the Taiwanese team uses the so-called Madin-Darby canine kidney cell.'Our cell technology is based on dog kidney cells and this has not been used in any vaccine production,' Chong said.He said one of the reasons they chose not to use egg-based technology was the possible shortage of eggs in case of a bird flu outbreak.US-based Baxter Vaccines also uses cell-based technology, but centered on the African green monkey kidney cell.Taiwan's vaccine is intended to provide the island with an indigenous defence against a possible epidemic of bird flu which has claimed at least 171 lives worldwide since 2003, most of them in Asia.It is expected to undergo human clinical trials next year.'As vaccines are to be used on humans, Taiwan's government and our team will make sure of their safety before we can initiate the first and second phase of clinical trials' in 2008, Chong told a group of foreign correspondents.The researchers are able to produce about 7,000 doses a month in the laboratory and hope to increase this tenfold after construction of a pilot plant is completed before the end of this year.Taiwan's health authorities hope that a factory could be built here with an annual capacity of 16 million doses of such vaccine.afp
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