AF-EU-14005 EDUFLUVAC (BO-22.04-006-001)

EDUFLUVAC - AF-EU-14005

Current human influenza vaccines afford only limited protection against seasonal as well as pandemic influenza.  As influenza viruses can accumulate three-four amino acids substitutions per year and frequently change antigenically to escape population immunity, vaccine composition has to be updated and vaccines need to be administered annually.  As a consequence, persistent monitoring and selection of viruses, production, formulation and conduct of clinical trials to evaluate safety and immunogenicity of the new vaccines are necessary every year.  A major shortcoming is therefore that the relatively long production time results in a vaccine that does not always have a sufficient antigenic match with the epidemic strain. 

A significant advance in human  infectious disease research would be the development of a new generation  influenza vaccine that stimulates production of a robust, broadly  neutralising antibody (bnAb) response, not only to drifted variants of  seasonal influenza viruses, but preferably also to different influenza A  virus subtypes that regularly infect birds and mammals, and may be the  basis of future influenza pandemics.  Thus, the development of a  “universal” influenza vaccine that can provide broad coverage against  different strains within a subtype or even across subtypes has become a  key public health priority in both industrialised and low and middle  income countries. In order to address the problem of antigenic drift and  annual vaccine reformulation, the EDUFLUVAC Consortium, funded by the  European Commission (EC) 7th Framework Programme (FP7), proposes to  develop a combinatorial immunisation strategy to educate the immune  system towards cross recognition and coverage against antigenic drift in  seasonal influenza virus exposure.  

To achieve this goal, EDUFLUVAC aims  at developing a novel influenza vaccine candidate encompassing a  combination of multiple influenza haemagglutinin (HA) or neuraminidase  (NA) antigenic variants within a single (sub)type.  This vaccine  concept, using the proven, modern technology of baculovirus-derived  virus-like particles (VLPs), is expected to elicit a broad neutralising  immunity that will confer longer-lasting and broader protection against  multiple strains of influenza virus. These new vaccine concepts will not  only benefit human influenza vaccine production, but will also probably  impact the production of animal influenza vaccines