Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.

In 2002 the UK Government established that a Bank of human embryonic cell lines should be established to oversee the use of these cells to ensure that any cells of this type, used in the UK were obtained ethically and only used in research for the benefit of treatment of serious human disease. In addition the Bank should provide access to quality-controlled stocks of these cell lines to provide a high quality international resource in support of the UK s stem cell community and to further the use of these cells in regenerative medicine. Such a role for the Bank in supporting the move of stem cell therapies from the laboratory to the bedside was confirmed to be a key element in the UK Stem Cell Initiative Report prepepared by Sir John Pattison and accepted by the Government. In the next phase of funding (Phase III) the Bank aims to sustain and develop its position as the foremost repository of ethically-sourced and well characterised stocks of human stem cell lines banked to international quality standards. Whilst in Phase II the primary focus of the Bank was on academic research, Phase III will see the Bank coordinating more closely with scientific programmes translating research developments into therapeutic applications, the regenerative medicine clinical community and those developing human cell culture models to improve the efficiency of development of new drugs to reduce costs and increase patient safety. The Bank will continue to develop its international role in supporting the development of stem cell therapy through: ? the provision of quality-assured and safety tested cell lines and other products supporting researchers and clinical applications; ? its continued lead on best practice and the setting of international consensus standards for the delivery of high quality and safe stem cells; ? its developing training programme for stem cell scientists, technical staff and quality assurance personnel in support of the UK s developing regenerative medicine industry; ? its scientific collaborations and internal research programme to establish robust methodologies for cell expansion, differentiation, preservation and characterisation which will improve the qulity of materials supplied for research and provide improved methodological approaches for clincial application. It is intended that the Bank will now implement its position as a national resource and international centre of expertise in support of the development of regenerative medicines and product safety in the UK.

The World Health Organisation recognises HIV/AIDS as the number one infectious disease in the world. Doctors and scientists know that the best way to stop this disease would be to develop a vaccine to stop the 14,000 new infections with AIDS virus that occur each day worldwide. The difficulty is that scientists do not know whether an AIDS vaccine needs to stimulate the production of antibodies, molecules in the blood that recognise the virus and stop it from infecting new cells, or killer T cells that eliminate virus infected cells before the infection can spread further. Alternatively the vaccine may need to do something different to be fully effective. The team at NIBSC are studying an animal model of HIV and have found that animals vaccinated with a disabled form of the virus first are resistant to disease causing strains. This group think that events that occur within 3 weeks of vaccination are critical for the vaccine and that many of these occur in and around the gut. As a result, they will focus on unravelling these early events to enable a better AIDS vaccine to be designed and developed in the future.

Pandemic influenza presents a major threat to global public health. The ideal approach to countering this threat would be to develop a vaccine to prevent the disease. Unfortunately, however, because there are so many different types of influenza virus constantly circulating in humans and animals, and because the virus can mutate easily and quickly, scientists can?t predict exactly what the next pandemic virus will look like. It is not currently possible, therefore, to prepare in advance a vaccine that is guaranteed to work against any pandemic threat. For this reason, research scientists are trying to find ways of speeding up the process of developing and producing a vaccine once a pandemic has begun. An important part of this is maximising vaccine production capacity since during an outbreak, tens of millions of vaccine doses would need to be produced each week to have an impact on the first wave of disease. Influenza virus vaccines are produced in eggs and so the number of vaccine doses that can be produced from a given number of eggs is crucial. We know that this yield is quite variable depending on the particular virus strain that is used for vaccine production, but we don?t know why. This research project aims to understand the reasons behind this variable yield and to use this knowledge to find ways of developing high yielding vaccine strains that will help manufacturers produce the maximum possible number of vaccine doses in the shortest possible time when a pandemic strikes.

Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.