Introduction

Abstract

We have been living with influenza as long as history can remember, and we are so used to the fact that this disease is part of life that we usually do not pay much attention to it. Even the science of influenza virus has been dormant for more than half a century. After the excitement of the initial discovery of the virus in 1933 and the development of the first vaccines by growing the virus in the allantoic cavity of embryonated hen’s eggs in the 1940s, relatively little has happened in the field: development of the first serological assays, definition of some serological correlates of protection, and little more. There was no real breakthrough until the application of reverse genetics and of novel adjuvant technology to the field. Somehow people thought that the influenza problem had been solved or was not a problem, very little money was available for research. Worldwide only a few laboratories continued to perform research on influenza. Vaccine manufacturers had no incentive to invest in improved influenza vaccines because the low price and the limited market did not justify investments in new technologies. When the 21st century arrived, with every single field was celebrating technological quantum jumps, and the excitements of the human genome permeating the globe, influenza was still happy to use the technologies of 1940s, complacent with the status quo.