--- title: Chicken Eggs and Antigens: How the H1N1 Vaccine Is Made | TIME description: TIME tours the labs of Sanofi Pasteur, the world’s largest vaccine specialist, to learn how they make the H1N1 vaccine using lots and lots of chicken eggs canonical: https://time.com/video/SaofBvUJ/ og:title: Chicken Eggs and Antigens: How the H1N1 Vaccine Is Made og:description: TIME tours the labs of Sanofi Pasteur, the world’s largest vaccine specialist, to learn how they make the H1N1 vaccine using lots and lots of chicken eggs og:url: https://time.com/video/SaofBvUJ/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/SaofBvUJ/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Chicken Eggs and Antigens: How the H1N1 Vaccine Is Made twitter:description: TIME tours the labs of Sanofi Pasteur, the world’s largest vaccine specialist, to learn how they make the H1N1 vaccine using lots and lots of chicken eggs twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/SaofBvUJ/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # Chicken Eggs and Antigens: How the H1N1 Vaccine Is Made > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: Chicken Eggs and Antigens: How the H1N1 Vaccine Is Made [Watch (HLS stream): Chicken Eggs and Antigens: How the H1N1 Vaccine Is Made](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/SaofBvUJ.m3u8) (1:54)  _Published 2010-01-04. TIME tours the labs of Sanofi Pasteur, the world’s largest vaccine specialist, to learn how they make the H1N1 vaccine using lots and lots of chicken eggs_ --- Jul 27, 2023 1:17 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [Bird Flu Was Found in Chickens at the Largest U.S. Egg Producer](/video/PbLybli2/) ### Bird Flu Was Found in Chickens at the Largest U.S. Egg Producer [Pets, Eggs or Meat: Buying Birds at the Chicken Swap](/video/F27dgURG/) ### Pets, Eggs or Meat: Buying Birds at the Chicken Swap [H1N1 Virus Threatens Afghanistan](/video/5Ku6xmnl/) ### H1N1 Virus Threatens Afghanistan --- ## Transcript By now, you certainly heard a lot about the H1N1 flu vaccine. To learn more about how this new vaccine is made, I recently toured Sanofi Pasteur, the Pennsylvania company that supplies half of the world's influenza vaccines each year. To meet the demand for the H1N1 vaccine, the company has been running 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Believe it or not, turning the virus into a vaccine happens in chicken eggs, lots and lots of chicken eggs. It's a process that's decades old but seems to work well for influenza which likes the protein rich environment inside the egg. The eggs are injected with small amounts of the H1N1 virus in an extremely sterile environment. Once the virus is injected into the eggs, the trace are left alone in a warm incubating room for several days so the virus can grow. Then the harvesting starts. Machines slice off the tops of the eggs and any abnormal looking ones are discarded. The fluid containing H1N1 is siphoned off into a series of tanks that purify and concentrate the virus in proteins. Known as antigens, these proteins are what trigger our immune systems to generate antibodies against flu. The sterile product is squirted into vials containing just the right dose and packaged up for shipment. It's a time consuming process that takes about nine months. Scientists at Sanofi and elsewhere are working to find a more efficient egg free way of making vaccines but until then, it's the best method we have for protecting millions against the flu. This is Alice Park for time. com. ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Chicken Eggs and Antigens: How the H1N1 Vaccine Is Made","description":"TIME tours the labs of Sanofi Pasteur, the world’s largest vaccine specialist, to learn how they make the H1N1 vaccine using lots and lots of chicken eggs","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/SaofBvUJ/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2010-01-04T20:37:41.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/SaofBvUJ.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/video/SaofBvUJ/","duration":"PT1M54S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/video/SaofBvUJ/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}} ```