Reincarnations of Influenza Virus and Challenges with the Development of a Robust Influenza Vaccine

While some viruses occasionally pop-up and over-powers the immune system and cause deadly diseases Influenza virus is not one among them. In contrast, Influenza infections are much common with clinical manifestations such as common cold however they cannot be over sighted since they can cause uncommon consequences and even death if untreated. In this context prevention of Influenza infection is of primordial issue. Federal governments and pharma and biotech industries spend billions of dollars every year to develop novel yet robust anti flu vaccines but unfortunately we cannot shirp yet due to the fact that the immunity offered by them is temporary thanks to their very high rate of mutability. Currently these influenza vaccines are produced using reassortment genetical method in embyonated eggs. Cell culture based vaccines have also been developed however their efficacy is in par with inactivated influenza vaccines and live attenuated influenza vaccines only. Developing a universal influenza vaccine is the need of the hour and the future influenza vaccines are moving in these direction. With the advent of such universal vaccine influenza pandemics would be certainly a past history.

Author(s): Gopinath R, Rohan N, Durgadevi H, Govindaraju K and Elanchezhiyan Manickan

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