Polish Vaccine Consortium--a new national player in the influenza research.

Acta Biochimica Polonica decided to dedicate a special issue of the Journal to the influenza virus and influenza research. At first look, such decision may seem surprising. Influenza is not the main life-threatening disease in Poland at the moment. The majority of deaths in our country is attributed to cardio-vascular disorders and a growing threat to public health remains cancer. Taking into account contagious diseases, influenza — an illness in most cases followed by mild symptoms, does not seem to be as dangerous as numerous clinical infections with Streptococci or Pseudomonas sp. Spread of drug-resistant tuberculosis is also a matter of concern. With ageing population, neurological disorders (e.g. Alzheimer disease) constitute a serious burden. However, influenza is worth of attention. Efforts to get Influenza Virus (IV) spread under control constitute a model for understanding the delicate equilibrium between the public health care system and the constantly menacing pathogen. Disrupting such equilibrium may result in disastrous consequences. There are epidemiological examples of IV inducing lethal pandemics. The best known is the spread of the " Spanish " flu ravaging around 1918, responsible for deaths of about 50–100 millions of people. The outbreaks of pandemics with serious consequences are recurrent, with bursts in 1957, 1968, 1977, and recently in 2009. Today IV virus is still the most important cause of respiratory tract infections. The control of virus spread is therefore a constant matter of concern of public health system 1. This asks for efficient monitoring of IV infections, stockpiling of appropriate drugs and, most important, for implementation of effective vaccination programs. The system that prevents the spread of disease exists, but, unfortunately, has many gaps. The evolving virus quickly escapes from modes of control implemented by novel and seemingly promising drugs 2. Monitoring of IV is tedious and, due to technical reasons, in many cases a reliable virus identification (by PCR and sequencing) is done for only a marginal number of clinical samples 3. But the main problem of the system is the inefficiency of the vaccination campaigns. The main antigen inducing neutralizing antibodies is well defined; it is viral HA (hemagglutinin) polypeptide. This virus has been studied in depth 4 and since 1948 relatively efficient vaccines are available. Such standard vaccines are composed of a neutralized virus grown in embryonated hen eggs. Due to the high genetic instability of the virus, leading to constant appearance of novel strains 5 , the …