LOS ANGELES – Dr. Edwin D. Kilbourne, a virologist who figured out how to manufacture a new influenza vaccine each year and was a principal adviser to the U.S. government on flu, died Feb. 21 in Branford, Conn. He was 90. No cause of death was released.

Kilbourne was involved in every aspect of preparing vaccines for the influenza season, understanding the genetics of the virus, manipulating it to create a version that would grow in eggs, and helping make the recommendation of what the vaccine formulation should be each year, Food and Drug Administration officials said on his formal retirement in 2002.

Without his efforts, the United States may not have had an annual influenza vaccine — or its development might have been delayed for years or decades.

The influenza virus is a highly mutable infectious agent. Developing an immunity to one year’s circulating virus provides little benefit for the next year’s, which is why people have to get new flu shots annually. Experts analyze which viruses are circulating and make their best guess about which three should be included in the vaccine for the next season.

The vaccine is prepared by growing the virus in fertilized eggs, then killing it and using the components to produce immunity in humans. Unfortunately, many of the viruses that manufacturers need to use in the vaccines grow very poorly in eggs — much too poorly for manufacturers to amass a sufficient quantity of virus to produce a vaccine in time for the upcoming flu season.

In 1960, Kilbourne discovered that he could use strains of influenza that grew readily in eggs and add to them key parts of the viruses that researchers wished to incorporate in a vaccine. The different strains would mix, or recombine, in the test tube and create an effective vaccine that would grow rapidly.

“This was the first genetically engineered vaccine of any kind,” Kilbourne said later.

 

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