Caterpillar Cells Could Prove Key to Mass-Producing Flu Vaccine

Via ScientificAmerican.com -

A new technique for producing flu vaccine makes it simpler to produce mass quantities of the life-saving stuff in the face of a pandemic.

Baculovirus is the plague of the fall armyworm, which is itself a major pest for corn farmers. The virus infects the caterpillar's cells and hijacks them to produce the proteins it needs to thrive and spread. Scientists have appropriated this cellular machinery to produce other proteins, including hemagglutinin, the key used by the influenza virus to infiltrate human cells and make us sick. Now a vaccine produced from such insect-derived hemagglutinin has proved effective in preventing infection by several strains of human influenza, according to a new report in JAMA The Journal of the American Medical Association.