Fever over flu

It’s time for some shameless self-promotion: Check out today’s Herald story about CombiMatrix’s efforts to create biochips that detect bird flu and more. It can be found at http://www.heraldnet.com/stories/05/12/05/100bus_virus001.cfm

The Mukilteo firm isn’t the only one with “flu fever.” Here’s the Associated Press’ round-up of some other companies that are chasing flu vaccines and detection methods: http://www.sacunion.com/pages/california/articles/7061/ or http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=1371979

A Chinese biotech is close to beginning human-stage trials on a bird flu vaccine as well: http://www.forbes.com/markets/feeds/afx/2005/12/05/afx2368496.html

Also, other companies besides CombiMatrix are looking at alternative vaccine-making methods. Here’s that story, which includes quotes from Dr. Richard Webby, who I talked to by phone last week for the CombiMatrix story: http://www.techcentralstation.com/120505F.html

Key quote from Webby: “The process of getting the proper strain in a chicken egg is fairly random and you may have to start over,” he says.