Report Shows Test-tube Immune Systems Can Speed Vaccine Development

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New technology allows scientists working on new vaccines to combat infectious diseases to test their products' effectiveness on a model immune system in a laboratory, without putting the upgraded vaccine into humans.

Researchers have begun building model immune systems using human cells, and this lab technique should make early vaccine trials quicker, safer and cheaper, according to scientists in the United States and Britain involved in this novel approach. The technology also has the potential to be used to mass produce antibodies in the lab to supplement real immune systems that are compromised, or battling pathogens like Ebola.

A report announcing the new "in vitro booster vaccination" technique was published Monday in The Journal of Experimental Medicine, a prestigious peer-reviewed medical journal published by the Rockefeller University Press. The research project involved produced antibodies that attack strains of tetanus, HIV and influenza.