According to the Center of Disease Control and Prevention, an influenza pandemic would likely result in 2 to 7.4 million deaths globally. The fear of many governments is that long lead times for vaccine production may not allow for a rapid response to a pandemic virus strain.
There has been little improvement in the way that influenza virus vaccines are produced. Today, vaccine production remains a slow and expensive process, mainly because most of the production of the influenza vaccine is egg-based. Some advances have been made with cell based methods, but more abbreviated vaccine manufacturing times are needed to address a potential pandemic threat.
LG611 (Pandemic) is a virus-like particle (VLP) vaccine. It is produced from cells lines that have been generated using Lentigen's Lenti-VLP technology. This core protein and antigen complex resembles a live virus to the immune system. Its ability to elicit a powerful immune response has been demonstrated in mice.
Mice immunized with LG611 show potent antibody immune response. Serum from immunized mice was serially diluted. A HA antibody response could be detected even after a 10,000 fold dilution. Lack of a further response with adjuvant indicates that the response was not a subunit, but due to VLP particles.
Lentigen’s VLP-based influenza vaccine has several advantages over current influenza vaccines, including:
- High copy numbers that lead to robust production yields
- Elimination of dependency on chicken eggs to manufacture vaccines
- Significant reduction of the time to manufacture permitting decisions about which flu strain to use to be made later in the flu season
- Exact strain matched vaccine because the VLPs are generated from a single round of replication, rather than an infection process
- Rapidly scalable manufacturing process
- Reduction of the potential for adverse events resulting from glycosylation disparity, since LG611 is produced from human cells
LG611 is currently in preclinical development. Following demonstration of immunogenicity and efficacy in animal models, GMP production, animal toxicity testing and clinical trials will be initiated.
