From LA Times
By Chris Piller

If bird flu erupts into a pandemic, the world will need a lot of vaccine in a hurry. That would be virtually impossible with the current flu-vaccine manufacturing method, which is little changed since the 1940s.

Several companies have bird flu vaccines in development, though none is yet commercially available.
But flu vaccines traditionally are grown in millions of fertilized chicken eggs, a process that takes at least six months. The lengthy production cycle makes it hard for drug makers to keep up with mutating flu strains and limits the amount of vaccine they can produce quickly.

The egg-based method is particularly problematic for bird-flu vaccines because the disease threatens chickens, which provide the essential raw material.

So pharmaceutical companies are developing two methods — using cell cultures and DNA cloning — that could speed things up. But each faces hurdles in gaining official approval.

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