Modern Vaccines- an Overview

Abstract

Vaccines are one of the greatest inventions in modern medicine, vaccines have played a significant role in control, eradication of lethal diseases like smallpox and are responsible for the robust improvement in life expectancy over the past 2 centuries. Edward jenner pioneered the development of vaccinology by demonstrating immunity to smallpox when inouculated with cow pox scabs. The development of live attenuated vaccines and inactivated vaccines in 19 th played a major role in prevention of diseases like cholera, rabies, anthrax. Early 20 th century saw development of sub-unit vaccines which possessed only the antigenic part of microbe making it safer than live attenuated vaccines, with the advent of recombinant DNA technology and proteomics in the later decades of 20 th century modern vaccine delivery platforms like recombinant viral vector vaccines, bacterial vector vaccines, DNA vaccines, Mrna vaccines, DNA vaccines, Outer membrane vesicles, virus like particles had a rapid growth, with many viral, bacterial vaccines being currently used and relatively newer vaccine technologies like Mrna vaccines, DNA vaccines, Virus like particles show a promising future with several vaccine candidates in development pipeline.