MDCK cell-cultured influenza virus vaccine protects mice from lethal challenge with different influenza viruses

Influenza epidemics are major health concern worldwide. Vaccination is the major strategy to protect the general population from a pandemic. Currently, most influenza vaccines are manufactured using chicken embroynated eggs, but this manufacturing method has potential limitations, and cell-based vaccines offer a number of advantages over the traditional method. We reported here using the scalable bioreactor to produce pandemic influenza virus vaccine in a Madin-Darby canine kidney cell culture system. In the 7.5-L bioreactor, the cell concentration reached to 3.2 × 10(6) cells/mL and the highest virus titers of 256 HAU/50 μL and 1 × 10(7) TCID50/mL. The HA concentration was found to be 11.2 μg/mL. The vaccines produced by the cell-cultured system induced neutralization antibodies, cross-reactive T-cell responses, and were protective in a mouse model against different lethal influenza virus challenge. These data indicate that microcarrier-based cell-cultured influenza virus vaccine manufacture system in scalable bioreactor could be used to produce effective pandemic influenza virus vaccines.