How to Make Flu Vaccine: A Tutorial
Flu season is upon us and, not surprisingly, there is no dearth of information available to the public about the seasonal and H1N1 flu vaccines. Mostly there are stories about the lack of availability of the vaccines, underreporting of deaths associated from H1N1 infections and perhaps, most importantly concerns about flu vaccine safety. Despite attempts by the CDC and a few dedicated virologists like BioCrowd co-founder Vincent Racaniello, flu vaccine manufacturing is an enigma to the lay public.
While I am a card-carrying microbiologist, my knowledge of the manufacturing of flu vaccine is admittedly lacking. With this in mind, I came across an outstanding tutorial about flu vaccine manufacturing published by the College of Agriculture at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (my alma mater). The UW tutorial is easy to understand and will shed light on and help to demystify flu vaccine production for lay people (and a few scientists like me).
