Present state and developments in the production of inactivated poliomyelitis vaccine

A review is given on the present state and developments in the production of inactivated poliomyelitis vaccine. Various aspects of the production such as cell substrates, large scale culture techniques, seed viruses and processing of virus harvests are discussed in view of safety, potency and economics. As far as cell substrates are concerned subcultured monkey kidney cells from captive-bred monkeys or non-tumorigenic continuous cell lines both cultivated in microcarrier culture are at the moment considered to be the best cell substrates in substitution for primary monkey kidney cells. Although with the present seed viruses highly potent vaccines can be prepared attention should be paid to the antigenicity and stability of the seed viruses especially type 1 seed virus. For processing of virus harvests concentration by ultrafiltration followed by purification with column chromatography is giving very pure virus suspensions. The results regarding yields and economics on the processing of virus harvests may be improved by application of affinity chromatography on immobilized antibodies. Inactivation by formalin has proved to be a reliable and safe method for the inactivation of the concentrated and purified virus suspensions.