A Wisconsin biotech firm is using home grown technology to produce flu vaccine faster and better. Paul Radspinner, president and CEO of Madison based FluGen, says flu vaccines today are manufactured in embryonated chicken eggs. "It can be time consuming, it can be messy, it's ripe for contamination, there's all kinds of issues than can and have arisen," with that procedure, says Radspinner.
All major influenza vaccine manufacturers are in the process of developing vaccines that will be produced within cells rather than the embryonated eggs. "What's we're doing is working to make those cells really produce at a much higher level," says Radspinner.
FluGen is built on technology, licensed through the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation , and created UW Madison's Yoshi Kawaoka and Gabrielle Neumann. "This . . . shows why Wisconsin is a hotbed for biotech right now," says Radspinner.
