A common immunosuppressive drug may have the ability to boost the power of vaccines, research suggests. Rapamycin is commonly give to transplant patients to stop their bodies rejecting donor organs. In tests on mice and monkeys, scientists found it enhanced the response of their immune system to experimental vaccines.

GlaxoSmithKline's RTS,S malaria vaccine entered its final phase of pre-approval testing last week in Bagamoyo, Tanzania, raising hopes that the drug could be licensed for widespread use by 2012. On 26 May, five infants aged 5–17 months were inoculated with the vaccine. In the coming months, the study will become the largest ever trial of a malaria vaccine candidate, involving 16,000 children under the age of two at eleven sites in seven African countries. RTS,S is so far the only malaria vaccine to make it to phase III trials, in a development process that has taken more than two decades and cost over US$400 million.

Six years of worrying about bird flu did much to prepare the United States for the current swine flu outbreak, federal officials and an independent monitoring group said Thursday, but they cautioned that there were still gaps in planning. After the H5N1 avian flu emerged widely in Asia in 2003, killing about 60 percent of those infected by it, many countries took steps to head off the crisis that would emerge if that virus were to acquire the ability to jump easily from human to human. It has not, but a number of the measures were helpful. These are some of them: ¶The federal government stockpiled 50 million courses of Tamiflu. ¶New vaccine factories were opened. ¶Pandemic plans were written, and emergency drills were held.