Advances in influenza virus-like particles bioprocesses

Introduction: Influenza Virus-like Particles (VLPs) are one of the most promising vaccine strategies to complement traditional egg-based processes and contribute to shortening the response time when facing future pandemics. Research programs have taken advantage of the potential of this approach to produce influenza VLPs on a variety of cellular platforms, reaching the industrial level of development and recent commercialization. Area covered: This review aims to give an overview of available strategies for influenza-VLP production and their respective stages of development, from small-scale preclinical studies to large-scale industrial processes. Recent trends and fulfillments in purification schemes of influenza VLP were also reviewed with regards to quality and potency requirements that go along with influenza vaccine manufacturing. Expert opinion: In the next five years, it is expected that there will be licensing of new influenza vaccine products based on VLP strategy. Few VLP upstream processes are mature enough and close to fully complement or seriously concurrence the ovoculture process. Nevertheless, many improvements have yet to be achieved in downstream processes. In the next few years, research efforts in this field are expected to provide purification strategies and tools to achieve higher recovery yields and improve the cost-effectiveness of VLP processes.