A New Master Donor Virus for the Development of Live-Attenuated Influenza B Virus Vaccines

Influenza B viruses (IBV) circulate annually, with young children, the elderly and immunocompromised individuals being at high risk. Yearly vaccinations are recommended to protect against seasonally influenza viruses, including IBV. Live attenuated influenza vaccines (LAIV) provide the unique opportunity for direct exposure to the antigenically variable surface glycoproteins as well as the more conserved internal components. Ideally, LAIV Master Donor Viruses (MDV) should accurately reflect seasonal influenza strains. Unfortunately, the continuous evolution of IBV have led to significant changes in conserved epitopes compared to the IBV MDV based on B/Ann Arbor/1/1966 strain. Here, we propose a recent influenza B/Brisbane/60/2008 as an efficacious MDV alternative, as its internal viral proteins more accurately reflect those of circulating IBV strains. We introduced the mutations responsible for the temperature sensitive (ts), cold adapted (ca) and attenuated (att) phenotype of B/Ann Arbor/1/1966 MDV LAIV into B/Brisbane/60/2008 to generate a new MDV LAIV. In vitro and in vivo analysis demonstrated that the mutations responsible of the ts, ca, and att phenotype of B/Ann Arbor/1/1966 MDV LAIV were able to infer the same phenotype to B/Brisbane/60/2008, demonstrating its potential as a new MDV for the development of LAIV to protect against contemporary IBV strains.