Meetings / News

OPTIMMUNIZE: IMPROVING THE BENEFICIAL EFFECTS OF VACCINES

OPTIMMUNIZE: IMPROVING THE BENEFICIAL EFFECTS OF VACCINES
19 – 21 February 2020
Wellcome Genome Campus, UK

The conference will explore and discuss various aspects of the non-specific effects of
vaccines, including their impact on neonates and infants, how generalisable and durable
these effects are, the implications for geriatric and veterinary medicine, and why non-specific effects
should differ between sexes and across the lifespan.

News

WHO International Standards and Reference Preparations for Cytokines and Growth factors

The accompanying Table lists WHO International Standards (IS), WHO reference reagents (WRR) and other cytokine and growth factor standards available from the NIBSC. ISs and WRRs are publicly available reference standards with defined units (International Unit for IS) established by the WHO Expert Committee on Biological Standardization. Lyophilised and formulated to ensure long term stability, they serve as ‘primary’ standards for bioactivity and for calibration of secondary reference standards. The use of IS and WRR to calibrate commercially available or laboratory made reagents including immunoassays where feasible as per WHO recommendations facilitates comparisons of data between assays, different laboratories, and individual studies allowing global harmonisation.