Cracking the vaccine conundrum

As GP surgeries switch to high flu alert, vaccine expert and pharmacology lecturer Anne Moore tells Catherine Shanahan that chicken eggs are key to developing the annual flu vaccine

So it all goes back to the chicken and the egg, or, to be more precise, chicken eggs.

The old tried-and-tested method of producing an annual flu vaccine involves injecting millions of embryonated eggs. This is the most common method of producing a flu vaccine and it’s been on the go for decades.