3 ms·
I agree that it's not straightforward, but there are lots of industrial processes that take as long as growing a plant. Scaling physical production is always a
by krschultz 12y ago
I agree that it's not straightforward, but there are lots of industrial processes that take as long as growing a plant. Scaling physical production is always a huge problem. There have been years where it was difficult to manufacture the flu vaccine in the required quantities, and I believe that generally involves incubating the vaccine in an egg.
- hga 12y agoThe membrane cells of chicken eggs (the egg itself is of course one cell). When I last looked at this, during the swine flu pandemic, companies typically get 3 doses of antigen per egg. And this is a very slow process for new strains, first a seed culture has to be created by serious specialists that will both grow well in eggs (can be hard for avian flu...) and expresses the correct surface antigens. Much better approaches like this company's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protein_Sciences https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protein_Sciences are desperately needed if a killer flu is someday brewed (this tends to happen in an animal that is simultaneously infected with two strains of flu, so it's not mutation per se).