Bird Flu (H5N1 Avian Influenza) Vaccine News This is an RSS file. You can use it to subscribe to this data in your favourite RSS reader or to display this data on your own website or blog.

Newly Designed Vaccine Blocks H5 Avian Influenza In Animal Models
Until now most experimental vaccines against the highly lethal H5N1 avian influenza virus have lacked effectiveness. But a new vaccine has proven highly effective against the virus when tested in both mice and ferrets. It is also effective against the H9 subtype of avian influenza. The research is published online ahead of print in the Journal of Virology. The strength of the new vaccine is that it uses attenuated, rather than "killed" virus. (Killed viruses are broken apart with chemicals or heat, and they are used because they are safer than attenuated viruses... (Source: Health News from Medical News Today)
Source: Health News from Medical News Today - March 27, 2013 Category: Consumer Health News Tags: Bird Flu / Avian Flu Source Type: news

FDA delays approval of GSK bird flu vaccine
LONDON (Reuters) - Regulators have delayed approval of an H5N1 bird flu vaccine from GlaxoSmithKline, designed to be used in a pandemic. (Source: Reuters: Health)
Source: Reuters: Health - March 25, 2013 Category: Consumer Health News Tags: healthNews Source Type: news

Regulatory update: GlaxoSmithKline receives complete response from FDA for candidate pandemic H5N1 adjuvanted influenza vaccine
GlaxoSmithKline [NYSE:GSK] announced today that it has received a Complete Response letter from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in response to the Biologics License Application (BLA) for its Pandemic Influenza A Virus Monovalent Adjuvanted candidate vaccine, referred to as Q-Pan H5N1. (Source: GSK news)
Source: GSK news - March 25, 2013 Category: Pharmaceuticals Source Type: news

Cleverly designed vaccine blocks H5 avian influenza in models
(American Society for Microbiology) Until now, most experimental vaccines against the highly lethal H5N1 avian influenza virus have lacked effectiveness. But a new vaccine has proven highly effective against the virus when tested in both mice and ferrets. It is also effective against the H9 subtype of avian influenza. The research is published online ahead of print in the Journal of Virology. (Source: EurekAlert! - Medicine and Health)
Source: EurekAlert! - Medicine and Health - March 25, 2013 Category: Global & Universal Source Type: news

Predicting hotspots for future flu outbreaks
This year's unusually long and rocky flu season would be nothing compared to the pandemic that could occur if bird flu became highly contagious among humans, which is why UCLA researchers and their colleagues are creating new ways to predict where an outbreak could emerge. "Using surveillance of influenza cases in humans and birds, we've come up with a technique to predict sites where these viruses could mix and generate a future pandemic," said lead author Trevon Fuller, a UCLA postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability's Center for Tropical Research. The researchers'...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - March 14, 2013 Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news

Bird flu researchers get green light to continue work on engineered virus
A voluntary moratorium on research involving lab-created versions of the H5N1 bird flu virus has been liftedResearch on lab-engineered strains of the H5N1 bird flu virus is set to restart a year after the scientists voluntarily paused it to allow for an international public debate on the safest way to proceed.Last year, two teams of scientists in the United States and the Netherlands submitted papers for publication in Science and Nature describing how they had engineered the H5N1 bird flu virus – which kills half of the people it infects but cannot naturally transmit from person to person – to spread more easily betwe...
Source: Guardian Unlimited Science - January 23, 2013 Category: Science Authors: Alok Jha Tags: Bird flu Genetics Biology World news Infectious diseases Health guardian.co.uk Medical research Microbiology Society Controversies in science Source Type: news

Pandemic vaccination did not increase risk of fetal death
(Norwegian Institute of Public Health) Pregnant women who were vaccinated against pandemic influenza were not at increased risk of experiencing fetal death. However, pregnant women who contracted influenza had an increased risk of fetal death. This was found in a register study of women who were pregnant during the influenza pandemic in 2009. (Source: EurekAlert! - Medicine and Health)
Source: EurekAlert! - Medicine and Health - January 16, 2013 Category: Global & Universal Source Type: news

Brigitte Askonas obituary
Immunologist whose work led to the development of many new vaccinesBrigitte Askonas, widely known as Ita, who has died aged 89, was one of the leading figures of modern immunology. She built on the work of the science's earlier pioneers, Louis Pasteur and Paul Ehrlich, by increasing understanding of the immune system as an intricate network of many cell types interacting and producing mediators to control their complex functions.The principal base for her work was the National Institute for Medical Research (NIMR), north-west London, which she joined in 1952. She spent 36 years there, the last 12 of them as head of the imm...
Source: Guardian Unlimited Science - January 10, 2013 Category: Science Authors: Bridget Ogilvie Tags: The Guardian Obituaries Medical research Immunology Biochemistry and molecular biology Science Source Type: news