Whither vaccines?

Abstract

Currently used vaccines have had major effects on eliminating common infections, largely by duplicating the immune responses induced by natural infections. Now vaccinology faces more complex problems, such as waning antibody, immunosenescence, evasion of immunity by the pathogen, deviation of immunity by the microbiome, induction of inhibitory responses, and complexity of the antigens required for protection. Fortunately, vaccine development is now incorporating knowledge from immunology, structural biology, systems biology and synthetic chemistry to meet these challenges. In addition, international organisations are developing new funding and licensing pathways for vaccines aimed at pathogens with epidemic potential that emerge from tropical areas.

Conformational Occlusion of Blockade Antibody Epitopes, a Novel Mechanism of GII.4 Human Norovirus Immune Evasion

“…Blockade antibody responses are proposed correlates of human norovirus protective immunity ( 35 ). Elucidation of the specific epitopes correlated with protection could facilitate vaccine design strategies ( 36 , 37 ). Human norovirus infection elicits a skewed blockade antibody response to the hypervariable epitope A of the infecting strain ( 9 , 26 ).…”

mRNA vaccines — a new era in vaccinology

“…Conventional vaccine approaches, such as live attenuated and inactivated pathogens and subunit vaccines, provide durable protection against a variety of dangerous diseases 3 . Despite this success, there remain major hurdles to vaccine development against a variety of infectious pathogens, especially those better able to evade the adaptive immune response 4 . Moreover, for most emerging virus vaccines, the main obstacle is not the effectiveness of conventional approaches but the need for more rapid development and large-scale deployment.…”

mRNA vaccine: a potential therapeutic strategy

“…However, most of the cancer vaccines are under preclinical and clinical trials. Although much progress towards developing vaccines has been achieved, there still exist viral pathogens escaping the adaptive immune responses [ 5 ]. Besides, the increasing need for large-scale production and rapid development urges to develop novel vaccine approaches.…”