A prime–boost vaccination of mice with heterologous H5N1 strains

We evaluated the priming effect of an H5N1 pandemic vaccine in a mouse model to investigate strategies for influenza pandemic vaccination. For priming, an alum-adjuvanted inactivated whole H5N1 vaccine (NIBRG-14, clade 1) was used. As booster vaccines, several formulations of Indo05/05/2005(H5N1)PR8-IBCDC-RG2 vaccines (clades 2–1) were evaluated, including split, whole, alum-adjuvanted split, and alum-adjuvanted whole vaccines.Any type of booster vaccination elicited a significant HI antibody response despite the difference in antigenicity between the priming and booster vaccines. The split vaccine elicited a much stronger booster response than the alum-adjuvanted whole vaccine. When the mice were primed with the H1N1 or H3N2 vaccines, this did not affect the booster response to the H5N1 vaccine. These results indicated that an alum-adjuvanted whole vaccine is able to confer immunological memory to haemagglutinin even if the primed and boosted vaccine strains are in different clades and, once vaccinated, a split vaccine is preferred to evoke recall responses.