ORAL PRESENTATION Open Access Development of a mammalian cell culture process for rapid Clinical-Scale production of novel Influenza Nanoparticle vaccines

Influenza virus infections cause seasonal epidemics, affecting millions of people worldwide. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates ∼300,000-500,000 deaths per year worldwide due to seasonal influenza and more than $26.8-87.1 billion/year in healthcare costs in the United States alone [1]. Influenza, a segmented RNA virus achieves part of its ongoing virulence as a result of its strikingly high mutation rate, typically reported for Influenza A viruses of ~2 to 2.5 × 10−3mutations/site/ year. Thus, is the intense effort and energy devoted to achieving effective long-term human and veterinarian vaccines. Currently, licensed influenza vaccines are either trivalent (three influenza strains) or quadrivalent (four influenza strains), as either an injectable inactivated whole virus (IIV) or a nasal spray live attenuated vaccine (LAIV) [2]. Although efficacious, standard traditional Influenza vaccine production is laborious, only moder-ately high-throughput and requires physical plants hous-ing and/or incubating millions of specific-pathogen-free eggs. Research targeting alternate strategies has been pro-digious, both at the preclinical and even Phase I clinical level, and has investigated approaches such as split virion, subunit, DNA, and viral vectored vaccines. Among the recently-explored, more novel and potentially-promising strategies has been recombinant particulate vaccines gen-erally comprising virus-like particles or nanoparticles