Iranian Scientists Indigenize Virus Culture, Harvest Device for Production of Vaccine
“Considering the fact that the virus culturing and harvesting device was needed in the Iranian laboratories, we tried to produce and indigenize it,” Alireza Karimzadeh, the founder and head of the knowledge-based team, told ANA.
Elaborating on the process of virus injection by the device, he said that the "SPF" eggs, for instance, are placed in the boxes inside the device, then thin needles containing the virus with a small diameter gently hit the egg shells, and then the samples become viral.
“Mostly, the process of culturing and harvesting the virus in different countries is conducted manually. The advantage of this device as a knowledge-based product is to facilitate the virus injection process without human intervention,” Karimzadeh said.
“Making an injection pump with the accuracy of one hundredth of a cc and designing optical sensors to monitor the movement of samples are among the advantages of this device,” he said, adding that the virus culturing and harvesting device had been designed and produced in Italy, the US and China until now.
In a relevant development in December, Iran launched a production line for the new generation of recombinant vaccines to meet the country’s needs in cases of biological crises.
“Recombinant vaccines are the solution to biological crises in the country,” said Reza Bani Hashemi, the head of the Research and Development (R&D) Department of Razi Vaccine and Serum Research Institute (RVSRI), on the sidelines of a ceremony to launch the production line of the new generation of recombinant vaccines at Razi Institute.
He noted that the production line is the industrial scale-up site for the research, development and production of recombinant vaccines and the advanced adjuvants that did not exist in the country.
“One of the advantages of this site is the conversion of all recombinant vaccines to an industrial scale, and another positive point is the ability to turn ideas into products,” Bani Hashemi said.
“At this site, we are capable of bringing new generation of vaccines that are being produced in the world to the production stage at a higher speed than foreign producers,” he stated.
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