DEVELOPMENT OF A MAMMALIAN-CELL (VERO) DERIVED CANDIDATE INFLUENZA-VIRUS VACCINE

Influenza vaccine production is dependent on the availability of embry onated hen eggs for virus growth. This is an extremely cumbersome syst em with many disadvantages with respect to selection of virus variants and presence of adventitious viruses. We have developed an alternativ e cell culture system which allows rapid production of large volumes o f vaccine, The World Health Organisation (WHO) approved Vero cell line was used in serum-free culture to grow a multitude of influenza strai ns to high titre, This system could be scaled-up to allow vaccine prod uction with a 1200 litre fermenter volume. A purification scheme was d eveloped which resulted in a high purity whole virus vaccine, This was demonstrated to be at least as immunogenic as a conventional egg-deri ved preparation in a mouse model. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All r ights reserved.