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Scientists in Taiwan are making plans to mass produce a bird flu vaccine using a novel cell-based technology to battle a possible outbreak of the H5N1 virus.
According to the team leader, Pele Chong, starting from scratch, the team at the Vaccine Research and Development Center of the National Health Research Institute took just 13 months and NT$40 million (US$1.21 million) to develop the necessary expertise.
The new technology uses a different medium from the usual chicken eggs method for cultivating vaccines. The team uses the so-called Madin-Darby canine kidney cell.
"Our cell technology is based on dog kidney cells and this has not been used in any vaccine production," said Pele Chong.
According to Chong, one of the reasons they chose not to use egg-based technology was the possible shortage of eggs in case of a bird flu outbreak.
According to the team of scientists, the vaccine is intended to provide Taiwan with an indigenous defense against a resurgence of bird flu which has claimed at least 171 lives worldwide since 2003, most of them in Asia.
Human clinical trials are set to begin next year.
"As vaccines are to be used on humans, Taiwan's government and our team will make sure of their safety before we can initiate the first and second phase of clinical trials" next year, Chong told a group of foreign correspondents on Thursday.
Presently, the team of researchers is able to produce about 7,000 doses a month in the laboratory but they hope to increase this tenfold after construction of a pilot plant is completed before the end of the year.
According to Health authorities, they are looking into how a factory could be built with an annual capacity of 16 million doses of vaccine. The health authorities have already stockpiled 190,000 imported vaccines for emergency use even though they have not undergone human clinical trials.
The vaccine project is part of a plan launched by the government in January to guard against a bird flu epidemic.
US-based Baxter Vaccines also uses cell-based technology, but centered on the African green monkey kidney cell.
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