Recombinant vaccines for influenza virus.

The influenza virus causes significant morbidity and mortality annually. Vaccination is currently the most effective measure to prevent influenza-related illness, however, current vaccine technologies face annual problems with vaccine-strain matching and accelerated vaccine development programs. Moreover, vaccine efficacy is often poor in high-risk populations that include young children and the elderly. These problems would be further complicated with pandemic vaccine production where a matched vaccine strain would need to be identified, approved for use, and millions of doses rapidly produced without forewarning. Recombinant vaccine technologies, which include multivalent peptide vaccines, plasmid DNA vaccines, and recombinant viral vectors, offer potential solutions to these challenges, as well as new strategies to improve vaccine immunogenicity, cross-protection and an avenue toward developing a 'universal' influenza vaccine.