Suspension Culture for Avian Influenza Vaccine Production

Creative Biolabs optimizes the complete vaccine production system and provides comprehensive media development services for vaccine production. We offer formulations for cell lines that act as hosts for viral production. Count on us to help address your challenges and get your process going.

Avian Influenza

Avian influenza, also known as bird flu or avian flu, is a variety of influenza caused by viruses adapted to birds. Avian flu is caused by strains of influenza viruses that have adapted to a specific host. Although influenza A is adapted to birds, it can also stably adapt to and sustain human-to-human transmission. Among the three types of influenza viruses (A, B and C), influenza A virus is a zoonosis infection that is almost entirely a natural reservoir in birds. For most cases, avian flu refers to the influenza A virus.

Avian Influenza Vaccination

The following vaccine types are currently available in Creative Biolabs:

• Monovalent including either H5 or H7strains;
• Bivalent including H5 and H7 strains;
• Both monovalent and bivalent vaccines can contain homologous or heterologous neuraminidase subtypes; this depends on the circulating virus neuraminidase and the neuraminidase present in the vaccine;
• Live recombinant vaccine (fowl pox H5): These vaccines are only effective in chicken species and are then used only in day-old chicks because later exposure to wild-type fowl pox virus will prevent the use of vector vaccines.

Shortcomings of Traditional Avian Influenza Vaccine Production

In recent years, animal cell culture technology has gradually replaced the traditional chick embryo production process for influenza vaccine production. Currently, most of cells applied for influenza vaccine production are adherent and grown as monolayers. As a result, large-scale culture processes mainly rely on cultivating adherent cells on microcarriers in serum-containing medium. For vaccine production, supplementation of serum brings about many problems:

• High cost;
• Batch variation;
• Risk of contamination with viruses, mycoplasmas, and prions;
• Causing difficulties for downstream purification.

To address these issues, serum-free medium has been exploited in vaccine production processes. The development of a serum-free suspension cell culture process is very important for influenza vaccine production.

Serum-Free Suspension MDCK Cell Line Culture for Avian Influenza Vaccine Production

Several suspension cell lines have been established and applied in influenza vaccine production, including MDCK, PER. C6, AGE. CR, EB14/EB66, and CAP. In particular, for influenza production, serum-free suspension culture of MDCK cells has been developed.

Creative Biolabs has developed a MDCK suspension cell line in a serum-free medium. It is found that our serum-free medium supported the stable subculture and growth of both adherent and suspension cells. The growth kinetics in serum-free media are comparable to the growth kinetics in serum-containing media. Although the virus production of adherent cells in both media is similar, suspension culture in serum-free media shows a higher virus yield than adherent cells in serum-containing media. These show the great potential of this suspended MDCK cell line in serum-free media for influenza vaccine production.

Features

• Full suspension for seed batches, expansion and manufacturing;
• Exclusive MDCK suspension cell line;
• Exclusive serum-free suspension media;
• Suitable for a variety of vaccine strains such as H1, H3, H5, H7, and H9.

Advantages

• Low cost: low serum, no micro-carriers, low labor cost;
• Easy to operate with high stability: reducing the burden of downstream purification process;
• Low side effects: low impure protein;
• High antigen content: completely meet the requirements for the semi-finished product of the antigen;
• Suitable for large-scale production.

Related Products

All of our products can only be used for research purposes. These vaccine ingredients CANNOT be used directly on humans or animals.