Scientific Publications by FDA Staff

Vaccine 2011 Feb 17;29(9):1836-43

The development of vaccine viruses against pandemic A(H1N1) influenza.

Robertson JS, Nicolson C, Harvey R, Johnson R, Major D, Guilfoyle K, Roseby S, Newman R, Collin R, Wallis C, Engelhardt OG, Wood JM, Le J, Manojkumar R, Pokorny BA, Silverman J, Devis R, Bucher D, Verity E, Agius C, Camuglia S, Ong C, Rockman S, Curtis A, Schoofs P, Zoueva O, Xie H, Li X, Lin Z, Ye Z, Chen LM, O'Neill E, Balish A, Lipatov AS, Guo Z, Isakova I, Davis CT, Rivailler P, Gustin KM, Belser JA, Maines TR, Tumpey TM, Xu X, Katz JM, Klimov A, Cox NJ, Donis RO

Wild type human influenza viruses do not usually grow well in embryonated hens' eggs, the substrate of choice for the production of inactivated influenza vaccine, and vaccine viruses need to be developed specifically for this purpose. In the event of a pandemic of influenza, vaccine viruses need to be created with utmost speed. At the onset of the current A(H1N1) pandemic in April 2009, a network of laboratories began a race against time to develop suitable candidate vaccine viruses. Two approaches were followed, the classical reassortment approach and the more recent reverse genetics approach. This report describes the development and the characteristics of current pandemic H1N1 candidate vaccine viruses.