BioCentury
ARTICLE | Tools & Techniques

Vaccines revisited

June 14, 2012 7:00 AM UTC

A team from Oregon Health & Science University and Najít Technologies Inc. has shown that hydrogen peroxide could be a better way to inactivate viral vaccines than conventional methods such as formaldehyde and b-propiolactone.1 Najít, which was spun out of the university in 2004, hopes to start a Phase I trial of an inactivated yellow fever virus vaccine in the next 1-2 years.

Noninfectious vaccines are typically produced by chemically inactivating a virus using formaldehyde or b-propiolactone. This approach can damage a virus so that it can no longer replicate, but the approach also can damage the antigenic epitopes required for an efficient immunological response...