PUBLICATION HIGHLIGHT
Determining the efficacy of a flu vaccine
Do you remember the 2009 flu pandemic? Vaccination is often considered the most effective way to reduce influenza associated morbidity and mortality. However, the process of developing and producing vaccines can be time-consuming. Specifically, in the case of the influenza vaccine, hemagglutinin (HA) is the protein that mediates influenza virus fusion to the host cell, allowing the host to become infected. As a result, since HA is the most important influenza antigen in vaccines, the isolation of active HA from those inactivated by pH changes, deamidation, or elevations in temperature is especially important.
SBGrid member Ethan Settembre has been working on developing a new, more time-efficient method of isolating these active HA molecules by digesting them with trypsin. This is due to the fact that the researchers found that only inactive HA would be digested by the protease. Using this digestion, the researchers could then isolate the active HA using reverse-phase high pressure liquid chromatography (RP-HPLC). In effect, this new methodology, which the researchers hope will replace single-radial immunodiffusion (SRID), could allow for faster determination of the potency of influenza vaccines, and, as a result, have great implications for public health.
Read more: Vaccine.
See structure of influenza hemagglutinin using SBGrid Structure Viewer.
Kristen Rodrigues is a graduate of the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences & Technology PhD program in Medical Engineering and Medical Physics with a concentration in Biological Engineering.
Originally published at https://www.tumblr.com on November 8, 2015.
