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While vaccines are perhaps medicine's most important success story,there is always room for improvement. Researchers at Oregon Health& Science University's Oregon National Primate Research Center(ONPRC) appear to have done just that. As explained in a newlypublished research paper, Mark Slifka, Ph.D., and colleagues havediscovered a new method for creating vaccines that is thought to besafer and more effective than current approaches. The researchresults are published online in the journal Nature Medicine. "Most vaccines have an outstanding safety record," explainedSlifka. "It is important to keep in mind that no medicalachievement has saved more lives than the simple act ofvaccination. However, for many diseases, we have struggled todevelop an effective vaccine. In other cases, vaccines may beprotective, but come with rare but serious side effects. Forinstance, the live oral polio vaccine was very effective at stopping polio outbreaks andtransmission, but was also responsible for eight to 10 cases ofvaccine-associated polio in the United States each year. Thisproblem was solved in 2000 when the U.S. switched to aformaldehyde-fixed 'dead' form of the vaccine. Our goal is to makevaccines like these safer and potentially even more effective bypioneering an entirely new approach to vaccine development." Slifka's approach is remarkable because it is the first todemonstrate that hydrogen peroxide can inactivate viruses for useas vaccines. Although hydrogen peroxide has long been known as aneffective antiseptic and is often used to sterilize medicalequipment, it was believed that it would be too damaging to beuseful in vaccine development. It turns out that this previousnotion was incorrect. In fact, peroxide may turn out to be one ofthe best new approaches to future vaccine design. In the study published this week, Slifka's lab generated not one,but three vaccines. "We wanted to demonstrate that this is truly a platform technologyand not just a one-hit-wonder," explained Slifka. "For this reason,we chose three unrelated model systems and demonstrated protectivevaccine-induced immunity in all three cases." The three diseases targeted by these viruses are West Nile virus , Lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus (a relative of lassa fever virus, known to cause hemorrhagic fever in Africa) and vacciniavirus (widely known for its previous use in the smallpox vaccine.) An Oregon-based biotech company, Naj t Technologies, Inc., ishoping that these advances in vaccine technology will result notonly in new vaccines but also new jobs in the Portland area. "This new approach really gives a boost to an area of vaccinedevelopment that's been stagnant for some time," said Ian Amanna,Ph.D., associate vice president for research at Naj tTechnologies. "Because of these advances, we've been increasing our workforce andputting together a group of very talented researchers. Inpartnership with OHSU, we're excited to have the opportunity tofurther develop this technology into commercial vaccines that canoffer protection for at-risk individuals. These vaccines will notonly be important to international travelers, but also to thepeople living in endemic regions. These places are often indeveloping countries with limited resources for preparing andtesting life-saving vaccines and we are looking forward to the daythat we can bring these new vaccines to the countries that needthem the most." Naj t Technologies, founded by Slifka and colleagues using methodsfirst discovered at OHSU, hopes to continue working together withacademic institutions such as OHSU, ONPRC, and WashingtonUniversity-St. Louis to create new and better vaccines for some ofthe world's biggest problems including West Nile virus, yellow fever and dengue hemorrhagic fever. Additional References Citations. I am an expert from opticalfiberpatchcord.com, while we provides the quality product, such as Optical Fiber Media Converter , Fiber Optic Odf Manufacturer, Optical Fiber Patch Cord,and more.
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