Influenza pseudotypes have been employed extensively by us to undertake serological assays for public/animal health and vaccine industry R&D, and could potentially contribute towards the licensure of new influenza vaccines, at least as an adjunct assay. In a joint study with Novartis Vaccines, we showed that pseudotypes could be used to sensitively quantify neutralising antibody responses elicited by a pre-pandemic H5N1 vaccine and that these correlated significantly with those measured by haemagglutination inhibition (HI), single radial haemolysis (SRH) and microneutralisation (MN). We have made an optimised protocol available for undertaking such pseudotype neutralisation assays.
We now have a comprehensive library of influenza A HA pseudotypes comprising HA1 to HA18 and influenza B pseudotypes comprising Yam/Vic and the pre-lineage split. This is an excellent resource for undertaking immunogenicity studies for universal influenza vaccines.
We have published our library as a pre-print here.
Please get in touch at n.temperton@kent.ac.uk to discuss access and collaboration.