FDA approves new bug-based flu vaccine

The Food and Drug Administration has approved a new vaccine that could help protect you from the flu.

Wednesday FDA officials gave the nod to Flublock, an insect-based influenza vaccine.

Federal health officials say it's the first vaccine made by injecting flu genes into an insect virus and growing it in caterpillar cells. That means, unlike current vaccines, it does not require the whole flu virus grown in chicken eggs for production.

Manon Cox, president and CEO of Protein Sciences Corp. said 150,000 doses of the vaccine will be distributed by mid-February to people with egg allergies and others who are unable to receive current flu vaccines.

In vaccines produced now, the virus must be isolated from patients' blood, purified and injected into specific kinds of chicken eggs to grow.  Flublok avoids those time-consuming steps in a process that will be faster, easier to control and easier to scale up in an emergency.

Flublok contains three full-length recombinant HA proteins to help protect against three strains of the flu including two influenza A viruses, H1N1 and H3N2, and one strain of influenza B.  

Currently Flublok is only approved for use in adults ages 18 to 49.   The side effects include pain at the injection site, headache, fatigue and muscle aches, which are also common in egg-based vaccines.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention the U.S. is in the midst of a moderate to severe flu outbreak, with deaths reaching epidemic levels and activity widespread across 90 percent of the country.

Courtesy: MSNBC