Title: Ferrets and the Challenges of H5N1 Vaccine Formulation
Abstract: discovery that influenza viruses can infect ferrets and that they can be readily cultivated in the allantois of embryonated chicken eggs. Remarkably, since that time, no better animal model of influenza infection in humans has been found, and the embryonated chicken egg has yet to be successfully replaced as a medium for cultivating vaccine virus. As demonstrated by Govorkova et al. in this issue of the Journal of Infectious Diseases [1], ferrets and embryonated eggs may still provide the basis for developing influenza vaccines that will be effective in the face of a con-