MedImmune Licenses Reverse Genetics Technology to Japan's BIKEN for Developing Influenza Vaccines

MedImmune (Gaithersburg, MD) has licensed its proprietary reverse genetics intellectual property to BIKEN, the Research Foundation for Microbial Diseases of Osaka University in Japan, to support the development of new vaccine strains to produce non-live human influenza vaccines.

Reverse genetics is a method by which viruses such as influenza can be generated from segments of DNA. It can be a useful technology because the process does not require manufacturers to work directly with potentially highly infectious pandemic strains, such as H5N1, rather only with segments of the virus’s genome.