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A new method of making flu antibodies could result in a treatment
being available within weeks of a pandemic occurring. Currently,
flu vaccines take at least six months to produce after a new strain
appears. The life-saving technique means that treatment could be
rapidly made using the antibodies produced by previous patients.
Instead of focusing on the main antibody-secreting cells, which
take up to one month to appear, the method relies upon a type of
antibody-making cell produced in a transient burst one week after
infection. Researchers at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia,
have isolated these early cells from people injected with an ordinary
flu vaccine. The team found that the antibodies these cells make
attack that strain of flu. Significantly, researchers were able
to produce large quantities of purified 'monoclonal' antibodies
from the cells within just a few weeks. This process takes months
using the later cells. The team are investigating whether potentially
pandemic flu, such as H5N1, also induces these early antibodies.
Source: The New Scientist, 3 May 2008
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