The current challenges for vaccine development

Abstract

Vaccine development has played a hugely important role in combating infectious disease. Despite this success, there is still a great need for new vaccines and these are emerging far more slowly than we would wish. Despite the massive expansion in understanding of immune responses to infection, research is often hindered by a lack of understanding of the immune responses required specifically for protection, or by a lack of approved adjuvants and delivery systems to induce the required responses. In addition, the financial commitment required to license new vaccines is significant, and the more lucrative markets are often not those with the greatest need. In this review, we discuss many of the hurdles that new vaccines must overcome in order to reduce morbidity and mortality, and some of the initiatives that are being attempted to supply new vaccines to those that need them most.

The TLR2 Binding Neisserial Porin PorB Enhances Antigen Presenting Cell Trafficking and Cross-presentation

“…Dendritic cells (DCs), as professional APCs, are capable of stimulating both B cells and T cells in context of major histocompatibility complexes. Targeting antigen to DCs and the induction of cytokines aiding in the onset of a protective immune response are key features for an efficient vaccine 6, 10, 16 . Different DC subsets and other cell associated or soluble mediators determine the type of immune response, i.e.…”

In Vivo and In Vitro Characterization of the Immune Stimulating Activity of the Neisserial Porin PorB

“…Pathogens such as the Plasmodium sp. , HIV, mycobacterium and emerging pathogens present new obstacles to the development of effective immunotherapies [5]. …”

Systems immunogenetics of vaccines

“…Oyston and Robinson [10] recently summarized some of the key issues and barriers currently faced in vaccine development that we have aggregated into several major challenge areas (Figure 1). The first major challenge is clinical characterization.…”