Anthrax Vaccines - Sterne's Vaccine

Sterne's Vaccine

The Austrian-South African immunologist Max Sterne (1905-1997) developed an attenuated live animal vaccine in 1935 that is still employed and derivatives of his strain account for almost all veterinary anthrax vaccines used in the world today. Beginning in 1934 at the Onderstepoort Veterinary Research Institute, north of Pretoria, he prepared an attenuated anthrax vaccine, using the method developed by Pasteur. A persistent problem with Pasteur's vaccine was achieving the correct balance between virulence and immunogenicity during preparation. This notoriously difficult procedure regularly produced casualties among vaccinated animals. With little help from colleagues, Sterne performed small-scale experiments which isolated the "Sterne strain" (34F2) of anthrax which became, and remains today, the basis of most of the improved livestock anthrax vaccines throughout the world.

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Famous quotes containing the word sterne:

    When a poor disconsolated drooping creature is terrified from all enjoyment,—prays without ceasing ‘till his imagination is heated,—fasts and mortifies and mopes, till his body is in as bad a plight as his mind; is it a wonder, that the mechanical disturbances ... of an empty belly, interpreted by an empty head, should be mistook for [the] workings [of God].
    —Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)