Statistical analyses for all in vitro assays were performed using 2-tailed student's T test. Natural log transformed data and two-sample t test were used to analyze data shown in Figures 5 and 7b . Two-tailed P values < 0.05 were considered statistically significant. Peptides were considered immunogenic in mice if they induced IFN-γ spot formation from immunized mice that were significant (P < 0.05) compared with spot formation from control mice. All mouse experiments were repeated at least twice. There were 4-5 mice for each group. The experiment in Figure 7b determined immune response and imaged mice in parallel. Conserved epitopes of influenza A virus inducing protective immunity and their prospects for universal vaccine development Influenza A viruses belong to the best studied viruses, however no effective prevention against influenza infection has been developed. The emerging of still new escape variants of influenza A viruses causing epidemics and periodic worldwide pandemics represents a threat for human population. Therefore, current, hot task of influenza virus research is to look for a way how to get us closer to a universal vaccine. Combination of chosen conserved antigens inducing cross-protective antibody response with epitopes activating also cross-protective cytotoxic T-cells would offer an attractive strategy for improving protection against drift variants of seasonal influenza viruses and reduces the impact of future pandemic strains. Antigenically conserved fusion-active subunit of hemagglutinin (HA2 gp) and ectodomain of matrix protein 2 (eM2) are promising candidates for preparation of broadly protective HA2- or eM2-based vaccine that may aid in pandemic preparedness. Overall protective effect could be achieved by contribution of epitopes recognized by cytotoxic T-lymphocytes (CTL) that have been studied extensively to reach much broader control of influenza infection. In this review we present the state-of-art in this field. We describe known adaptive immune mechanisms mediated by influenza specific B- and T-cells involved in the anti-influenza immune defense together with the contribution of innate immunity. We discuss the mechanisms of neutralization of influenza infection mediated by antibodies, the role of CTL in viral elimination and new approaches to develop epitope based vaccine inducing cross-protective influenza virus-specific immune response. Influenza remains a serious respiratory disease in spite of the availability of antivirals and inactivated trivalent vaccines, which are effective for most recipients. Influenza viruses are RNA viruses with strongly immunogenic surface proteins, especially the hemagglutinin. Error-prone RNA-dependent RNA polymerase and segmented genome enable influenza viruses to undergo minor (antigenic drift) as well as major (antigenic shift) antigenic changes, which permit the virus to evade adaptive immune response in a variety of mammalian and avian species, including humans. The unpredictable variability of influenza A viruses, which cause yearly epidemics in human population, is the main reason why no effective prevention against influenza infection exists up to date. Currently available vaccines induce antibodies against seasonal and closely related antigenic viral strains, but do not protect against antibody-escape variants of seasonal or novel influenza A viruses. Therefore, there is a call for development of a vaccine, which would be protective against virus strains of different HA subtypes and would not need to be updated every year. New approach to prepare a universal vaccine lies in the selection of conserved epitopes or proteins of influenza A virus, which induce cross-protective immune response, particularly M2, HA2, M1, NP [1] [2] [3] .