"And that purified protein is our vaccine, " said Clifton McPherson, the Protein Sciences quality control director.
CNN: King: H1N1 worries increase awareness on college campuses
Cohen took the malaria surface protein used in Ballou's vaccine and fused it to a protein from the hepatitis B virus, creating a harmless particle that looked like a virus to the immune system.
AN-1792 was a vaccine that immunized patients against a protein called beta amyloid, which is the main component of the plaques that destroy the brain in Alzheimer's disease.
One vaccine, from GlaxoSmithKline, uses a protein called MAGE-A3 found on lung cancer cells.
Wong (now at Stanford University) figured the mutated gene might make an ideal target for a vaccine, as it creates an abnormal protein not seen in healthy cells.
After that, Protein Sciences would have to request approval for its H1N1 vaccine, a process that could carry on well into 2010 and even beyond.
CNN: King: H1N1 worries increase awareness on college campuses
Influenza shots contain tiny amounts of egg protein, with varying amounts found in different brands of the vaccine.
The company is producing 100, 000 doses of vaccine per week, said Daniel Adams, CEO of Protein Sciences Corp.
The vaccine, called Stimuvax, aims to stimulate the immune system to attack a protein fragment called MUC-1 found on lung, breast, prostate and colon tumors.
The vaccine works -- he hopes -- by targeting something called a heat-shock protein, which is produced in high quantity by tumor cells.
But studying the structure of the antibody and the protein on the flu virus that it targets could make it that much more likely for a universal vaccine to be developed.
The key finding for vaccine development is that the "head" and "body" portions of the VP4 protein contain many of the targets that the immune system recognises when it attacks the virus and protects against infection, they say.
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