Novartis, Venter team on faster vax development

Novartis is turning to J. Craig Venter to help blaze a development shortcut that can carve weeks out of the time it takes to ramp up production of a new flu vaccine. One of the bottlenecks that appeared while developing a vaccine to fight swine flu occurred as the World Health Organization identified and distributed a reference virus needed to create new jabs. Venter's Synthetic Genomics Vaccines--a newly launched subsidiary--will work with Novartis to produce synthetic seed viruses, cutting as much as two months out of the development timeline. Story