NIBSC is in receipt of two pandemic influenza A (H1N1)v virus samples isolated in California, one virus isolated in Mexico and one isolated in New York (obtained from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the USA), three isolated in the UK (obtained from the HPA’s Centre for Infections, Colindale, London) , one virus isolated in New Zealand (obtained from the WHO Collaborating Centre, Melbourne, Australia), two viruses from Japan (obtained from the National Institute for Infectious Diseases, Tokyo, Japan) and work on developing candidate vaccine viruses has been in progress since the beginning of May. This was approached using two distinct technologies - classical reassortment and reverse genetics – both of which have been used successfully in the past by NIBSC for this purpose. It was necessary to make use of all available technologies in order to ensure the successful and rapid generation of a vaccine virus.
The Institute has successfully developed by reverse genetics, the NIBRG-121 reassortant virus derived from A/California/7/2009 (H1N1)v virus and NIBRG-122 reassortant virus derived from A/England/195/2009 (H1N1)v virus and they have now completed safety tests and are available on request. On further passage of NIBRG-121 in embryonated hens’ eggs, a virus NIBRG-121xp with improved growth properties was derived. This virus is available from NIBSC.
The Institute has received from New York Medical College, USA and CSL, Australia reassortant viruses produced by classical reassortment from the A/California/7/2009 (H1N1)v virus. These viruses will be available on request from NIBSC.
Additional activities entail growing quantities of virus for the development of anti-sera to be used in further characterisation studies and in the production of reagents which are required by the vaccine manufacturing industry and national control laboratories in standardisation and quality control of pandemic influenza A (H1N1)v vaccine. Investigations were also initiated to characterise the virulence of the influenza A (H1N1)v virus and to assess its similarity to recent seasonal human H1N1 viruses. These investigations were crucial in devising a safety test for the reassortant vaccine viruses
Click here for information on viruses and reagents.