{"id":2535,"date":"2008-01-08T22:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-01-08T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/gregladen\/2008\/01\/08\/smallpox-vaccine-alternative-i\/"},"modified":"2008-01-08T22:00:00","modified_gmt":"2008-01-08T22:00:00","slug":"smallpox-vaccine-alternative-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/2008\/01\/08\/smallpox-vaccine-alternative-i\/","title":{"rendered":"Smallpox vaccine alternative identified"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>University of California, Irvine infectious disease researchers have shown the effectiveness of a potential alternative to the existing smallpox vaccine that can replace the current biodefense stockpile for this lethal virus.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Philip Felgner and Huw Davies with the Department of Medicine found that the modified vaccinia virus Ankara (MVA) produced the same antiviral response in human and animal studies as the current smallpox vaccine, Dryvax. The study is part of a national effort to develop a replacement for the Dryvax vaccine, which causes serious complications in some people. The results are published in the Journal of Virology.&#8221;Studies have shown MVA to be a much safer vaccine product that takes advantage of modern technology,&#8221; Felgner said. &#8220;We are pleased that our advanced analytical methods may help to bring an effective and safer vaccine to the public.&#8221;<a href=\"http:\/\/today.uci.edu\/news\/release_detail.asp?key=1716\">[source]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Smallpox was eradicated in the 1970s, and it is believed that routine vaccination has kept its return from happening.  Of course, if it was really eradicated then that does not make a lot of sense&#8230;Anyway, Dryvax and MVA are similar to smallpox, so antibodies created for one can work on the other.  However, these viruses themselves are not particularly harmful.  MVA has advantages over Dryvax in terms of safety and manufacture process.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>University of California, Irvine infectious disease researchers have shown the effectiveness of a potential alternative to the existing smallpox vaccine that can replace the current biodefense stockpile for this lethal virus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[103],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5fhV1-ET","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2535"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2535"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2535\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}