http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/cidrap/content... CDC says vaccine shortage likely to outlast current H1N1 wave Fauci asserted that the vaccine makers are not to blame for the vaccine delays. "I don't want anyone to get the impression that it's the drug companies' fault this has happened," he said. "It's just the nature of the biology of the virus that it created an expectation that there'd be a certain amount."
The 'end game' for vaccine technology
Federal officials were questioned about the use of cell-based methods to make flu vaccines, as is now done to some extent in Europe. Cell-based production is considered more flexible and reliable and somewhat faster than the 1950s method of growing the vaccine virus in chicken eggs.

Lurie noted that a cell-based vaccine plant is being built by Novartis in North Carolina and is expected to be ready to start making vaccine in 2011. But how soon a cell-based flu vaccine will win Food and Drug Administration approval is uncertain, she added.

The Novartis plant "will get us a little shy of halfway to what our pandemic goal will be," to make enough vaccine for the entire population, she said.

Fauci said cell-based technology will be an improvement but is not the final answer to flu vaccine production problems. "We want to take vaccinology into the 21st century by not requiring the virus to grow. . . . The end game is to get away from requiring the virus to grow."

He said a number of newer approaches involve making particular viral proteins instead of growing the whole virus. One example is using baculovirus, an insect virus, to make the gene for hemagglutinin. He said one company is conducting phase 3 trials of a vaccine using that technique.

"What we're going to see over the next years is a gradual transition from egg-based [vaccine] to egg-based with cell-based to advanced molecular technology," Fauci predicted.

But the ultimate goal, he said, is to make a universal flu vaccine—one that targets a component of the flu virus that doesn't change from season to season. Such a vaccine could be made and stored in large quantities, and people wouldn't have to be vaccinated every year.

"That's the plan. That's going to take years," he said.