Rice University scientists have found a way to predict rapidly whether a new strain of the influenza virus should be included in the annual seasonal flu vaccine. While it sometimes takes new flu strains up to three years to become dominant worldwide, the new method can predict whether they will become dominant as little as two weeks after the sequence first appears in the GenBank database, the National Institutes of Health's collection of all publicly available DNA sequences.

NanoViricides, Inc. reports that its optimized FluCide?„? drug candidates achieved dramatic reduction in viral load within the lungs of animals infected with a lethal dose of H1N1 influenza virus.

Sinovac Biotech Ltd., a leading provider of biopharmaceutical products in China, announced today its unaudited financial results for the three-month and nine-month periods ended September 30, 2010.

People with egg or gelatin allergies shouldn't assume that just because they've had a flu shot safely in the past they will be able to again, according to a new study, presented at the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology annual meeting in Phoenix Nov. 11-16.

The Australian Federal Government scrapped the funding to the Australian National University ™s Master of Applied Epidemiology (MAE) program. This group helps Australia ™s response to major disease outbreak and will be disbanded at the end of next year. According to Emeritus Professor Robert Douglas who founded this program, this has been responsible for Australia ™s response to serious epidemic outbreaks in the past.