Easily digestible tech news... http://www.techdirt.com/ en-us http://www.techdirt.com/images/td-88x31.gifhttp://www.techdirt.com/ Thu, 4 Apr 2013 17:00:00 PDT Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110105/20125212539/dailydirt-fighting-next-pandemic.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110105/20125212539/dailydirt-fighting-next-pandemic.shtml H7N9 strain that has no vaccine (yet!) and is starting to infect and kill people (instead of sticking to birds). We're just about coming to the tenth anniversary of SARS, and we're still creating over 100 million flu vaccines every year using egg embryos -- a process that takes months, time that we might not have if a really serious flu strain spreads quickly across the globe. Here are a few projects that are making vaccines more quickly.

• Tobacco plants can be made transgenic in order to grow vaccines for us, and they've been shown to be able to produce over a million doses of vaccine in a few weeks. DARPA has a challenge out to anyone who can produce vaccines at a rate of 10 million doses in a month. [url]
• Genetically modified tobacco plants can be grown and harvested by robots -- producing vaccine proteins very quickly and efficiently -- without the need for human labor. These robots can grow tens of thousands of tobacco plants in a batch, and it's likely only a matter of time before researchers can get these plant factories to produce other kinds of pharmaceuticals. [url]
• Flublok relies on insects to grow flu vaccines for us -- a process that has been used for other kinds of vaccines, but has only started to be used for the flu. Flublok has already been FDA approved, so it will be available to patients for the 2013-2014 flu season. [url]
• Bananas could potentially be grown with edible vaccines, but the regulatory hurdles for development have caused researchers to focus on non-edible vaccines grown in other plants (like tobacco). Bananas grown for edible vaccines might still be viable for treating fish or other animals. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

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]]> urls-we-dig-up http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20110105/20125212539 Thu, 17 Jan 2013 17:00:00 PST Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101116/11074311893/dailydirt-flu-season-is-here.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101116/11074311893/dailydirt-flu-season-is-here.shtml

The Khan academy has a lesson on what the flu is, making sure everyone knows the difference between the flu and a cold. It'd be cool to see online classes for all kinds of medical information -- and maybe even medical degree badges....? [url]

The 2013 flu vaccine wards against three strains: H3N2, H1N1 and Influenza B. However, the vaccine this year has been labeled only "moderately effective" by the CDC. [url]

Flu season comes around during the winter generally and not spring, summer or fall. But why? It could be the humidity; the flu virus survives well in warm, low-humidity air -- just like the conditions in most homes in the winter. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

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]]> urls-we-dig-up http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20101116/11074311893 Wed, 9 Feb 2011 17:00:00 PST Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110208/13340813007/dailydirt-playing-with-biological-fire.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110208/13340813007/dailydirt-playing-with-biological-fire.shtml

Oxford University researchers are testing a flu vaccine that will work on all known strains by targeting proteins in the virus that are common to all flu variants. But what happens 28 days later...? [url]

The release of sterile transgenic mosquitoes in Malaysia was aimed at fighting dengue by reducing mosquito populations. This actually isn't the first time these mosquitoes were tested in the field... and I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords. [url]

Synthetic biology is a growing field now that the guidelines from the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues (PCSBI) are out. "Scientists can't be so naive to think there won't be a possibility of bad things happening, but I think the public will grow to accept synthetic biology if we're able to talk about all of the great things that can be done with it." [url]

To discover more biotech stuff, check out what's roaming around in the StumbleUpon jungle. [url]  

As always, StumbleUpon can also recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

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]]> urls-we-dig-up http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20110208/13340813007 Thu, 28 Aug 2008 20:20:00 PDT Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080815/0314171990.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080815/0314171990.shtml hold back life-saving cures, and here's another example. It's actually a continuation of a story we wrote about a year and a half ago, about Indonesia's decision to stop supplying bird flu samples to the World Health Organization, claiming it was worried that a big pharma would patent a drug based off of it, and Indonesia wouldn't receive any of the benefit. The country has something of a point: as pharma companies have made various cures incredibly expensive in the past.

However, Indonesia is now taking this a step further, claiming "viral sovereignty" over the bird flu. In other words, it's claiming that since the virus samples are found in the country, Indonesia owns the virus -- and it's fighting pretty much every attempt by others to do anything with the virus, sometimes using questionable claims such as one about how a US medical research facility is trying to use the virus not to create a cure, but to create biological weapons. It's basing this claim of "viral sovereignty" on the same ridiculous patent rules that allow a country to claim "ownership" and patents over indigenous plants.

While there's obviously a huge political component to this dispute, at the heart of the trouble is this idea of "ownership" of something like a plant, virus or drug -- and that's an idea that the US has been a huge supporter of, so it can hardly complain about Indonesia taking it to the logical conclusion. And, of course, that logical conclusion is the exact opposite of what supporters of pharma patents insist the system is designed to encourage. That is, thanks to this hoarding and claims of ownership, not nearly enough research is being done to try to create vaccines for bird flu. And, to make this even worse, it appears other countries are starting to consider "viral sovereignty," as well -- meaning that research into curing various diseases may grind to halt while various countries argue over who owns what.

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