Recent Patents on Influenza Vaccines

Influenza virus is the pathogen responsible for the epidemic influenza and current vaccines include inactivated and live attenuated viruses which are produced in chicken eggs. However, these vaccines posses various drawbacks of their own and the protection rate ranges from 30~80% depending on match between strains included in the vaccine and circulating strains, leaving significant room for improvement. This review provides background information regarding the influenza vaccines and extends the discussion with an emphasis on the new patents published or granted over the last five years. These patents primarily aim at ameliorating existing bottlenecks in vaccine development and are associated with vaccine compositions that provide strong vaccine efficacies and broader cross-reactivity, and various vaccine platforms such as DNA vaccines, recombinant subunit, peptide and viral vector vaccines. © 2007 Bentham Science Publishers Ltd.