Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of ASPR/HHS. Some of the described activities have been performed in the frame of the FP7 TRANSVAC and PHARVAT projects, which are funded by the European Commission,

and the authors would like to acknowledge the contributions of their colleagues from the TRANSVAC and PHARVAT Consortia. “
“The Institute of Experimental Medicine (IEM), founded in 1890, is one of the oldest scientific institutes in Russia. It was here in the Department of Virology that Academician Smorodintsev first developed live viral vaccines IPI145 against polio, measles, mumps and influenza. Live attenuated influenza vaccines (LAIVs) generated by IEM have been used in Russia in adults since 1980 and in all age groups since

1987. To date, more than 100 million doses of LAIV have been used in the country for protection against seasonal influenza. Production of LAIV is based on the classic reassortment methodology, i.e. six genes from an attenuated donor backbone strain are combined with the genes coding for the haemagglutinin (HA) and the neuraminidase (NA) of circulating influenza virus strains. LAIVs are temperature sensitive with limited growth at 39–40 °C in ovo and thus cold adapted (ca) “donor strains” are used due to their growth ability at reduced temperature such Abiraterone mw as occurs in the human upper respiratory tract. Currently, all licensed LAIVs are produced in embryonated eggs, although some manufacturers are in advanced

stages of new generation cell-based LAIV development [1]. From 1997, when highly pathogenic avian influenza viruses began to circulate in Asia, IEM concentrated on the development of candidate pandemic LAIV. The first pandemic candidate H5N2 was registered in Russia in 2008. Further developments relating to H5N1, H7, H9 and H2 are in progress within a collaborative agreement with very PATH who provided funds for these studies. The high case-fatality rates caused by outbreaks of H5N1 in 2004 highlighted the huge shortfall in global influenza vaccine production capacity in the event of a pandemic. A major initiative launched by the World Health Organization (WHO) to meet the Global Pandemic Influenza Action Plan [2] objective to increase vaccine supply involved the transfer of influenza vaccine production technology to developing countries. A comprehensive review of influenza vaccine technologies was thus commissioned to select the most appropriate technologies for the capacity building project [3]. It was concluded that while egg-based inactivated influenza vaccine (IIV) was the most widely used, the high capital investment required for industrial-scale operations may be difficult to justify in countries with limited market for seasonal vaccine. For pandemic surge capacity, egg-based LAIV had clear advantages over IIV with its significantly higher yield, faster quality control release, needle-free and potential single dose delivery, and cross-protection.