Abstract:Pandemic influenza poses a grave threat to all mankind. Vaccination is widely considered to be the first line of defense for protecting populations in advance against an influenza pandemic, so the adequate and timely supply of effective vaccines is an urgent issue for the preparedness against the pandemic. There are a number of problems that concern the vaccine uses today, for example, (1) the production cycle is too long to respond to a novel virus; (2) because it is not known beforehand which strain of influenza virus would give rise to a pandemic, vaccines that impart broad cross-reactive immunogenicity are required, but the cross-protection of vaccines between different strains are very weak; (3) many people are allergic to the vaccines because of something in the egg medium. In order to be prepared for the pandemic influenza that may occur in a future time, a concerted effort from public health, commercial and scientific sectors is required. In this paper, the advantages and disadvantages of the inactivated influenza vaccines and the attenuated live influenza vaccines are discussed. Some aspects related with tackling the obstacles facing the development of influenza vaccine, e.g. the protecting period and the proper medium, and research progresses achieved are reviewed, including some key scientific issues in basic research of influenza, such as virus transmission, host restriction and pathogenesis, which are very important to the influenza vaccine development and pandemic control. Research progresses of influenza in China are also discussed. Some suggestions for influenza control and prevention are proposed.